In a perfect world, only mediocre films with slandered potential would be remade, giving underappreciated ideas a second chance. Nevertheless, in our real world, as long as there is even a sliver of a chance that people will once again flock to theaters to experience a certain film, that film will be remade. Of course, this isn’t an inherently bad thing; classics like John Carpenter’s The Thing and David Cronenberg’s The Fly were excellent remakes that used the originals as a foundation for something new. Travis Zariwny’s reimagining of Eli Roth’s neo-classic Cabin Fever, however, regrettably takes the Gus Van Sant approach to Deja Vu filmmaking.
Using a slightly modified version of Roth’s original script, the story still follows a group of twenty-somethings on vacation in an isolated cabin, where they stumble upon peculiar locals and a horrifying infection that can only be described as flesh-eating bacteria on steroids. When their car breaks down and the group has no means of contacting the outside world, they are forced to fight for survival in a place where one wrong move can mean infection and certain death.
The new ensemble cast isn’t anything special, featuring Mathew Daddario, Louise Linton, Nadine Crocker and a few others as the ill-fated young people. Gage Golightly also has a surprising appearance as the gender-swapped sheriff of the small community plagued by the infection. They all did a decent job at portraying the brutality of the situation, but stumbled with the script’s attempts at humor. To be honest, they weren’t any worse than the original cast, but the remake’s general lack of charm sadly reflected on their performances as well.
Now, studios generally argue that remakes are a way of introducing new demographics to older films that they may not want to watch, though these films also attract fans of the originals, making them instantly profitable. Following that logic, is it really worth remaking a film if it’s so recent and well-crafted that the script doesn’t need to be altered in order to so? Naturally, some producer answered ‘yes’, and while it may not seem fair to judge Cabin Fever in contrast to the original, this situation does say something about the current state of Hollywood.
Technically, there’s nothing wrong with the plot, as the original script was already pretty damn good. That being said, a lot of the original offbeat humor has been neutered in this new adaptation, and though very few changes were made, they were mostly meaningless references to contemporary entertainment and were sometimes even detrimental to the film as a whole. Cabin Fever doesn’t need a quick-scope reference, but removing the “pancakes” kid’s bizarre antics didn’t add anything to the experience either.
Zariwny’s direction is solid, but in the end, he is still rehashing Roth’s material. With an original script, I think there’s potential here for a respected genre director. Sadly, following many recent horror movie tropes, the film lacks atmosphere and charm (which were both plentiful in the 2002 version), and tries to make up for that with gore effects that aren’t much better than the ones from the first film. While we do get to see the beautiful woods and rivers, it feels like most of the color has been washed out, draining what little life remained in this sterile picture.
Ultimately, Cabin Fever isn’t horrible or even offensive, it’s just extremely unnecessary. Hell, at times, much like with Gus Van Sant’s Psycho remake, you may even start to suspect that the film is a secretly genius satire about remakes in Hollywood. However, in the end it’s way more likely that, once the film is over, you’ll just feel like watching a real Eli Roth movie instead of a soulless carbon copy lacking any of the rebellious qualities that made Roth a staple of the genre in the first place.
