Fear This Fever - Cabin Fever 2016 Review

     In 2003, I was one of the first to catch the Fever.

     Thanks to Fangoria and savvy Internet marketing, I was well aware of Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever long before its theatrical release. I didn’t have to see a frame of footage to fully get behind this film. It sounded like The Evil Dead for the infection age. Five college age adults party at a remote cabin, but instead of falling victim to demonic possession, they become hosts to a highly infectious flesh-eating virus. The basic concept sounded genuinely scary and highly disturbing, with a sickness instead of a slasher loose in the isolated woods, making extra-wet work of the ridiculously attractive cast. I simply could not wait to get a dose of this movie.

     I scored my chance months before the film’s release, when I attended a packed screening at the Seattle International Film Festival. Everyone was in the mood for a party movie, but the film about to unspool had me effectively frightened. Maybe it’s due to my long time juvenile diabetes, with its potential side effects of body deterioration and limb amputation, because disease movies seriously freak me out.

The original outbreak.

     Cabin Fever proved to be a quintessential midnight movie event. The raucous crowd responded with equal parts gagging and guffaws. Cabin Fever ended up being more Evil Dead 2 than The Evil Dead, a horror comedy. I squirmed and laughed with everyone else, but I had no worry of nightmares afterward, no lingering scars in my psyche.

     Having seen how well the film played to an audience, I was not surprised when Cabin Fever opened number three at the box office and became an independent horror hit. The sequels, however, suffered from diminishing screams and screens. Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever went the hipster gore comedy route, while Cabin Fever: Patient Zero inexplicably went the zombie island route. And yet the Cabin Fever concept remained strong enough to draw talent like Ti West, Larry Fessenden and Sean Austin into its infectious universe.

The cinematic fever continued to linger in the woods, awaiting another resurgence.

Time for another outbreak.

     In late 2014, instead of another sequel, a remake of the original Cabin Fever went into production, with Travis Z. directing from Roth’s script for the original. The film seemed to be shot in a hermetically sealed bubble of secrecy. With its questionable conception and thoughts of the frustratingly faithful Psycho remake in mind, its understandable that this revisiting of a recent hit might be greeted with doubt rather than the enthusiasm that greeted the original.

     With the new Cabin Fever, I am eager to report that there is a major difference that makes it an altogether different outbreak than the others. Most of the jokes have been dropped. This Cabin Fever is not a gore comedy; it is served without a side of Pancakes. This film delivers the disturbing and terrifying experience I had anticipated from the first entry. This sick flick is shriek out loud scary, while maintaining the audience participatory, midnight movie vibe of the original. It’s a harder party horror movie.

     My diagnosis, Travis Z.’s Cabin Fever is a five sore horror film. Five seeping sores.

Delivers pain, not Pancakes.

     Reminiscent of the Night of the Living Dead remake, Cabin Fever 2016 contains the same basic structure of the original, while it constantly works to subvert expectations for maximum scare value. Scenes that originally ended with a punch line now end with mounting dread. You may know who is going to die, but not how, and everything’s going to get a whole lot worse for this poor group about to lose their good looks in the ickiest and stickiest ways possible. And even though we know these are not the nicest kids, they come across less douche and more likable than before, especially Bert, which helps to increase investment in them.

Less douchey.

     This is a more violent and cringe-inducing Fever. The new infection has its own disgusting dynamics, a rot that strives for realism. There are a few scenes here that go way beyond anything in the original Cabin Fever. Most of the make-up effects work is practical, which adds to its impact. One spectacularly cruel sequence is bound to go down in the annals of graphic cinematic shocks and become horror legend.

You're going to need a bigger barf bag.

     As with the original Friday the 13^th and the best of the cabin-in-the-woods subgenre, great attention is paid to the atmosphere and location. This darker, less colorful film is assembled with the aim of maximum suspense. This is classic genre filmmaking that does not try to reference a specific decade, but instead utilizes all of the timeless mechanics that work. This reboot does allow one clever addition for the social media age, which leads to its own audacious shock.

     There are echoes of horror classics within this Cabin Fever, but not on the level of the knowing winks that Roth employed in the original film, such as playing the theme song from The Last House on the Left or recreating an iconic shot from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This film is more concerned with establishing its own identity, with less reference and stronger reality.

You'll be the doggie bag.

     Since this is Cabin Fever, we are back in quirky redneck territory. In another effective twist, many of the characters that provided comic relief in the original deliver menace now, including Grim and the boy at the gas station, Dennis. Deputy Winston may be the film’s most unnerving character. I still get chills and feel assaulted thinking about her.

     Director Travis Z. knows that you can’t replay a joke to the same effect, but you can amp the shock value of a familiar fright. This isn’t the work of somebody eager to show that he is a super fan, and Travis Z. does not attempt to do Roth’s style. This is the work of a talented new voice, and his faith in the material and understanding of the genre is evident in every frame. I predict T.Z. will quickly get launched into the biggest of the genre’s franchises; I’d love to see what he could do with a Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and he will wow us with his originals. I am eager to see his micro budget debut Intruder, shot prior to Cabin Fever, which appears to be a psycho-in-the-house chiller dense in classic suspense techniques.

Travis Z. is taking this seriously.

     I am not one to dismiss or discourage sequels or remakes, a very unpopular opinion, I know. They have long been a reality of the film business, and are among many of my favorite films. In regards to this remake and this series, this is the Cabin Fever that I've always been waiting for. I'm glad I caught it.

Armando D. Muñoz