Cabin Fever (2016)

Cabin Fever

Starring Samuel Davis, Matthew Daddario, Gage Golightly, Nadine Crocker

Directed by Travis Z

The Story:
Deciding to take a break from city life, friends Paul (Samuel Davis), Karen (Gage Golightly), Jeff (Matthew Daddario - younger brother of "San Andreas" and "Percy Jackson" star Alexandra Daddario), Marcy (Nadine Crocker) and Bert (Dustin Ingram) decide to have a vacation at a cabin in the woods.  All seems to be going well until a man who's obviously sick tries to come in, and they set him on fire.  Then, one-by-one, they begin getting sick themselves, with some sort of flesh-eating disease.  As they try to find help, they instead find a town filled with people who'd rather keep a deep dark secret a secret, at any cost.

The Synopsis:
Back in 2002, Eli Roth was a relative no-name director.  Then he produced a film called "Cabin Fever," and it was an instant hit.  He gave a brilliant blend of dark humor, gore, drama and then-groundbreaking effects.  It became a cult classic, and in particular a certain scene involving a girl, a bathtub, and a razor was compared to the famous shower scene in "Psycho," and years after seeing it, I can still vividly remember that particular scene.  The film put Roth on the map, and now he's considered as this generation's greatest horror directors, churning out hits like "Hostel" and "The Green Inferno." 

Fourteen years later, newcomer director Travis Z decided to make a name for himself by...offering a 90% shot-for-shot remake of Eli Roth's original.  Doesn't seem like a move an up-and-coming director would want to start out with, but he did.  The result is that it gave me a newfound appreciation for the original, and wondering why anyone would bother doing a remake so vapid and senseless.

There is so much wrong with the film that it's hard to find anything right with it.  Gone is Roth's nuanced blend of dark humor, gore and horror, and instead it's just gore and horror for gore and horror's sake.  There's nothing remotely funny about the film, and it's a rather cut-and-dry copy. 

Here, the actors are complete morons who you have very little care for.  They're an insult to today's generation, as they seem to be stock characters you'd find on a website.  There's the privileged white boy who acts tough but only cares for himself.  The trashy girlfriend who'll sleep with anyone.  The pretty girl who spends her time taking selfies (for as what I can remember, this is the first film where I see someone taking a selfie).  The jock.  Then there's the nerdy gamer who's totally out of his element with no cell phones, Internet, or TV (he even reads off a list of typical gamer words like "Grand Theft Auto," "Call of Duty," and the like).  Each character is as annoying as the last, and there's absolutely no redeeming qualities about any of them, which leaves you not caring about any of their outcomes.

The gore here is rather amped up, but in a way that makes it totally obvious it's fake.  At least, with the original, the bathtub scene made you cringe because it looked very life-like.  Here, in that same scene, it's almost laughable as the gore ratio is raised and it looks totally fake.  Then there's a scene right out of "Friday the 13th" that doesn't make a lick of sense and just ends up being totally silly.  Basically, this is a tale that would make Darwin proud - a natural disease that eliminates the stupidest and most pointless people.   

Honestly, to me, the scariest thing in the film is the actress who played Marcy.  Nadine Crocker has THE most scariest eyebrows in history.

Seriously, those aren't fake.  Pretty sure they can be seen from space.  It's like two bushes.  Every time she was on screen, I couldn't stop staring at them.  I didn't trust them.  Like they could've came through the screen and choked me.


The Summary:
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  Eli Roth would probably had preferred a complimentary letter telling him how great he is instead of trying to bring his cult classic back to life.

The Score: D