Writers: Eli Roth (screenplay, story), Randy Pearlstein (screenplay) Roth’s screenplay goes for the weird, wiggins-inducing type of backwoods horror a la “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” but he doesn’t have actors who can pull it off. Tame by the standards of Roth (who would later be labeled a “torture porn” purveyor), “Cabin Fever” now stands out for its bad acting. He was well regarded among horror nerds at the time, and a decade later he became a household name with his work showcased weekly on “The Walking Dead.” While Roth – particularly as a director – is clearly wading into a new craft, practical effects maestro Greg Nicotero adds professional cachet. But the low budget – and therefore low quality of acting, editing and music - remains a glaring weakness. Watched in the pandemic age, it’s more effective as contagion horror than it was then. It marks writer-director Eli Roth’s coming-out party and features gore-ific body horror at a time when such films were rare. This redux attempts to be scary where its predecessor was silly but the effect is a film that always seems to be taking itself too seriously.“Cabin Fever” (2002 at festivals, 2003 wide release) is considered an important film in horror circles. “It’s not a carbon copy of the original but the humor that made Eli Roth’s original enjoyable has been replaced with a total lack thereof. A better movie might conjure a disquieting atmosphere of dread as its clueless characters await their fates.” Variety ” … exactly the same as its predecessor, right down to the irritatingly contrived and purportedly humorous banter, cloying backwoods caricatures, and flesh-destroying illness spread by water (any similarities to Flint, Mich., are unintentional and best ignored). The revelation of the flesh-eating virus’s source, a queasy moment in Roth’s film, is reduced here to a generic action-movie beat each scene segues artlessly and unexcitingly into another, as if Zariwny were checking off each item on his list of obligations to Roth.” Slant Buy original: .uk “The leg-shaving scene, a memorable gross-out gag in the original, is awkwardly prolonged in the remake so as to pointlessly, unimaginatively ratchet up the gore. “In addition to its plot-generated shocks, the movie packs in so many gratuitous “Boo!” moments that you can set your watch by them … Who benefits from the existence of this film? Certainly not the largely bland ensemble of post-adolescent actors cast as the leads, who here can scarcely be called characters.” The New York Times For some reason, director Zariwny takes a more serious approach, which removes whatever sick fun is inherent to the material.” The Hollywood Reporter “The young ensemble playing the victims, including the wonderfully named Gage Golightly, goes through their violent paces with admirable conviction. More than half the movie’s over before the first of the principals gets infected, and it feels longer…” Fangoria “Much of the scenario proceeds the same way as before, though, and the real difference is that it lacks not only the confrontational zest it had the first time around, but the uneasy tension as well. 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.” Bloody Disgusting “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.
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