Cabin Fever (2016)

Review

"It's in the water!" - Paul

Five friends, two couples - Karen and Jeff plus Paul and Marcy, and the requisite odd ball hanger on Bert, head out into the dark woods for a weekend of drinking and frolicking, naturally at a cabin which is slightly run down. The locals look like they keep it all in the family and don't like strangers from the big city. Things start to go wrong real quickly with a hermit showing up at the friends place one night with clearly some sort of sickness, unfortunately one thing leads to another and rather than helping the dude they end up setting him on fire and chasing him off into the forest.

It doesn't take long before the symptoms of a flesh eating disease start showing up in the group with Karen in particular decomposing before their eyes. Throw in a dog that has gone feral from the disease, a posse of locals that want to sort out the city folk, and a sheriff intent on partying and you have fun times at Ridgemount High. So how does the remake stack up against the 2002 original?

Fourteen years is kind of a short time between an original and a remake in my sordid opinion, especially when the remake is kind of unnecessary in the greater scheme of things. While the original movie spawned two sequels of varying worthiness the remake revisits the familiar hunting grounds of the original movie without adding much in the way of anything new. The production values are higher and for sure director Travis Zariwny is less intent on being quirky and getting a reaction from the audience, seriously that gun line wasn't necessary in the original, and for mine is a better movie, but I was still left pondering exactly what the purpose of Cabin Fever circa 2016 actually was besides flogging a dead horse for a few more bucks.

Getting down to basics director Zariwny shows he has far more ability behind the camera then Eli Roth, and for sure knows how to construct a movie in terms of flow and scene construction, so at least with the remake we are getting a movie that doesn't kaleidoscope itself into mush. I must admit to being impressed by some of the scenery shots with Zariwny establishing his locations in solid fashion. Naturally he isn't getting the best out of a cast which can at best be described as plastic Hollywood fashion model types, but at least the locals - here to add some colour - show some ability to ramp things up. So overall a passing mark for the director, here delivering his sophomore effort following 2013's Sci-Fi outing Scavengers, though not high enough of a mark to really have this little block duck fanging for his next outing.

The script is the real low point of Cabin Fever (2016), besides simply reproducing the original movie in unnecessary fashion scribe Randy Pearlstein shows a singular lack of ability when it comes to character development, or if we had to be brutally honest dramatic intensity. All five of the main characters are pretty much cardboard cut outs with a couple of traits to define their characters. Karen and Paul are heavily into sex with each other, and hit the bedsheets almost from the time they arrive at the cabin, Paul and Marcy are old friends with Paul having the hots for Marcy who may or may not return the same feeling, and Bert who naturally is a bit of a geek into gaming and other nerd like activities. And that's it, besides everyone going hysterical as the whip comes down. At least the locals add some colour, though naturally they are inbred hicks as Hollywood believes everyone is in the middle states. Unfortunately I got no surprises from the script and was left waiting for each major scene from the original movie to tick off and then wait for the next one.

For horror fans the usual mistakes are being made when it comes to building a solid movie. Since the characters are only thinly drawn we don't give a damn what happens to them, there is no gradual build up to the overwhelming finale, and the plot foreshadowing is so thinly veiled its almost naked. On the bright side of the vial there is nothing left hanging, left field developments are not happening, and the good aren't exempt from paying a price. So win some lose some on this end of the ledger.

Gorehounds will be happy as the director doesn't move that far afield from Roth's original flick. There's plenty of decaying flesh on show, including the infamous razor in the bath scene, and the hound from hell attacking and dismembering a couple of characters. So if you don't mind it dripping and wet then you are in the right spot, though for the hard core crew it probably can be construed as restrained rather than go for broke.

For those after a bit of T&A, well the remake is dropping that on us without bothering to cover much up. There are two sex scenes going down, Gage Golightly and Matthew Daddario not bothered by dropping their respective kit, and you sure do get some fleeting views of boobs though not to the level of the Friday the 13th franchise. Considering the flesh eating virus attacking our partying youths there's probably a lot less tissue moments than most movies can claim fame from.

Horror tactics are nothing we haven't seen before, a few jump moments, a lot more gross out moments than actual generation of dread, but from memory no cats jumping out of cupboards. Overall not anything to write dispatches home about and pretty stock tactics in use, to be honest we should have got a hell of a lot more. In keeping with the original movie this is horror by numbers with no attempt to draw outside the lines.

If Cabin Fever (2016) hadn't appeared in my Netflix queue then I probably wouldn't have bothered checking it out, there's nothing much new under the sun here. Overall the movie is pretty much unnecessary and no one would have shed a tear if it wasn't made. But the remake is definitely a superior movie to the original in terms of structure and approach, though once again it involves twenty somethings that no one really gives a toss about and hence loses any audience sympathy it might have been aiming for. If you have seen the original already then you needn't bother with the remake, if you haven't seen the original then catch the remake instead. I didn't build any cabin fever over this movie, more cabin apathy.