Cabin Fever (2016)

Genre: Virus
Director: Travis Zariwny
Availability: VOD

Remakes. For good or evil they are as popular as ever. Sometimes we luck out and get a great re-imagining, like Evil Dead or Fright Night. Other times we end up with absolute garbage, like The Omen, or The Fog. And then there's the remakes that just seem completely pointless, they aren't good, they aren't bad, they aren't a new vision, and especially in Cabin Fever's case, they aren't a new voice. They just exist because. Because, Cabin Fever 4: Outbreak, fell through and so a remake was the next best thing.

But they couldn't even be bothered to write a new script, so they used Eli Roth's original script. Seriously. They used the same script. Well, a trimmed down 92 page version of the 134 page original script. Which makes sense because the one thing that made the remake different from the original is that it was lacking any sense of humor. Gone is the bizarre scene at the local store with the weird kid doing karate moves. Roth's original was not only gory and terrifying but it had an odd sense of humor to its characters, "the local color" as you will. There was also a tenderness to the romance angle, a very real sense of fear and doom with the virus angle, and a heart-wrenching feel to the abandonment and killing of friends scenes. The remake is just as gory with some solid young actors filling the spots but the spirit of the original is not there. It feels soulless. A resurrected, walking dead version of a classic, iconic movie.

And what's with The Shining nod at the beginning? (The Shining theme song plays briefly as the camera follows the car from above winding around the side of the mountain.) Maybe if the whole movie was peppered with classic movie fodder it would have made a kind of sense but just the one scene? Ugh, stop it. You're not some meta movie, you're a shameless unoriginal remake that is doing nothing for the genre aside from filling a slot on the metaphorical shelf.

Give me another cheesy Cabin Fever sequel any day of the week. I mean, did you see Patient Zero? That fight scene on the beach at the end... good stuff.

2 out of 5 stars