February 17th, 2016 
Sam Cohen 
Film: Cabin Fever
Starring: Gage Golightly, Matthew Daddario, Nadine Crocker
Directed by: Travis Z
Remaking a horror film is probably one of the trickiest things someone can do today. Rarely does the remake trump the original, especially because the original can have a vision that can’t be replicated or repurposed for the sake of another director’s ambition. Cabin Fever is a perfect example of such a phenomenon. The original, a bit of a masterpiece by director/writer Eli Roth, is as hilarious and bitingly satirical about cultural exceptionalism as it is kind of terrifying. The remake, made by Travis Z (what a name!), reduces everything to a gore-as-scares rendition of millennials experiencing a mild case of xenophobia. It’s aggressively bad in execution (see: the ham-fisted score), putting a few young actors into a common horror situation and having them act against a wall. That wall being the complete misunderstanding of the original concept. If you want to be judged as your own independent thing, at least try a little bit harder to deter from the path.
Karen (Gage Golightly), Jeff (Matthew Daddario), Marcy (Nadine Crocker), Bert (Dustin Ingram) and Paul (Samuel Davis), a group of 20-somethings, all venture to a cabin in the woods for a few days of debauchery. After coming upon a few strange characters in town, including a hand-biting feral kid wearing a bunny mask, dark forces start conspiring against them and their whole getaway is ruined. One of those dark forces being a flesh-eating sickness passed through water and bodily fluid transference.
There’s this weird comedic undercurrent to Cabin Fever that gets completely mishandled. For instance: The intro includes a man mourning the death of his dog named Pancakes before cutting to the opening credits. The movie is primed for laughs, even cutting things abruptly to unrelated things to keep reminding the audience that everything is being kept light here. Unfortunately, nothing else in the film denotes that kind of humor. The performances, score and dialogue are all delivered in such a manner that the only intent must be of a serious nature.
Eli Roth, who produces the remake of his own film, had such a firm grip on the material that you can’t imagine someone else delivering something so generic and randomly absurd. Travis Z envisions a world where the same concept can be delivered in such a straight-faced manner, so when those absurd moments do come, they actually stick out like sore thumbs. For those of you who have seen the original: Hearing a feral kid yell out “pancakes!” and proceeding to bite someone is meant to be for laughs. Here, it’s denoted by such odious narrative mishandling that it doesn’t enliven anything.
Karen, Jeff, Marcy, Bert and Paul are all treated as horror tropes here. That’s not to say that the same characters weren’t treated as such in the original, but here their shortcomings are much more pronounced because they’re forced to act out a concept misunderstood by the creative hive mind behind the film. None of the performances are anything special here and it’s a shame to see an up-and-coming cast being forced to deliver such drivel. Fuck, yell and shoot; that’s all they’re called upon to do here. The “fever” here is limp.
I apologize for the brevity of words here, but I’m trying to emulate the same amount of effort that the Cabin Fever remake put into its finished product. It’s a mess all around and it’s only saving grace is that it’s not aggressive in being bad, it’s just so naive that there’s nothing of worth to mine from here.
GRADE: F
Cabin Fever is playing at theaters in NYC and LA now and is also on VOD, if you are inclined to watch it.
- MOVIE REVIEW: ‘Popstar’ has at least a few hits - June 3, 2016
- MOVIE REVIEW: ‘Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising’ is the rare sequel that tries - May 21, 2016
- MOVIE REVIEW: ‘The Nice Guys’ is a loopy, drunk masterpiece - May 20, 2016
Posted in 
Tags: 