The Horror Show
Cabin Fever: Patient Zero
by Kaare Andrews
If you’re anything like me, you adored the first Cabin Fever movie immensely because of its dark humor and its ability to be proud of what it was: a cheesy, 80’s style horror film full of sex, gore and violence, that blew up and grew to be a successful cult film amongst horror fanatics. Oh…and Ryder Strong.
I watched the second Cabin Fever movie only because I thought it would at least be good for laughs; and at least it was slightly funny, because otherwise it really didn’t have any other redeeming qualities. I know what the people behind Cabin Fever were trying to do…launch some sort of franchise that would piggy back off the success of the first film.
So for reasons that I will never understand, Cabin Fever: Patient Zero was made (and it actually does not have an American release currently, so you will have to find a friend in Europe to lend it to you…or ya know, go about your business and find the movie however way you’d like.) On a whim I watched the trailer when it was suggested to me on YouTube. The trailer was full of promise; a prequel to the amazing first film, Sean Astin, death, mayhem, decent acting, and an interesting storyline to boot.
The movie begins with the same promise that the trailer boasted. An eerie scene on an island in which everyone is dead except for Astin’s character Porter. A “mysterious virus” has appeared on the island and somehow Porter remains healthy, completely untouched by the deadly flesh eating disease. He’s transported to a secret medical facility where a medical team works round the clock to find a cure for the virus and prevent it from becoming a global epidemic, and Porter has now become their guinea pig.
We then jump from Porter’s story to Marcus (played by Mitch Ryan) who is about to be married and meeting up with his small group of closest friends who include his brother Josh (Brando Eaton), best friend Dobbs (Ryan Donowho) and childhood pal Penny (Jillian Murray). Marcus’ group of friends have decided to surprise him with a last minute bachelor party by renting a swanky yacht and heading off to an uninhabited island for a night of partying. Little do they know, the island is definitely not uninhabited, and a deadly virus has escaped a secret medical facility.
That’s about all I need to tell you about the plot development of this movie because truly there was no progressive plot development and the film’s quality as a whole was such a let down, that it made me hate myself for watching it. I hated it so much that I will now spoiler alert,give away the ending so that you do not have to force yourself to sit through it and then wonder why I didn’t save you from wasting an hour and a half of your precious time. The end of this movie was honestly the most creative part of the entire film. The story in itself, if executed in a better way, would have been amazing. But the horrid casting and poor choices made by everyone behind the camera are the ones to blame here. The movie ends with one of the “child doctors” escaping the island with Marcus and Porter. The doctor and Marcus are the only people on the planet who know who Porter is, so he puts a few drops of his blood into their bottles of water and watches as they drink. Knowing their fates are sealed and that he can now successfully escape and never become a victim of experimentation again, he sabotages the boat’s engine and uses the lifeboat to make his getaway, leaving the doctor and Marcus stranded in the middle of the ocean to be consumed by the flesh eating bacteria.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t see the ending coming. It could have been that by the time the ending finally rolled around I was just too disconnected from the film in itself to catch any foreshadowing. You may have noticed I used the words “child doctors”. This is because the casting for the scientists that the government has left in charge of finding a cure for a deadly virus that could decimate the world look like they’re 19 year old strippers in costume hanging around with their sugar daddy. This would have been funny, if there was anything comedic about the film. The characters are awful. Marcus starts off as this nerdy introverted prude and suddenly, halfway through the film he’s a total weapon-wielding bad ass. The character of Dobbs I feel only existed because somebody on the production team said “I feel like we need another character.” All dialogue in this movie falls flat and half the time makes no sense. For example, a scene in which Marcus and Dobbs are discussing the future of their business went something like this:
Marcus: “My future father in law asked me to work in his firm.” Dobbs: “Don’t do this to me man, we’re just starting to make money.” Marcus: “I’m really stressed out, can we not talk about this?”
Okay, so, why in the world would Marcus even bring up the subject in the first place? All filler. This entire movie felt like a horrible improv show. Not to mention the god awful fight scene between one of the stripper doctors and Penny ending in a 90 pound woman being able to rip someone’s arms from their body. Da fuq?
I had to ask myself more times than once “What the hell am I watching?” There is crap, and then there is shit. This movie would fall under the shit category. If I ever meet Sean Astin, I would tell him “I hope you were offered all the money in the world or that you were playing a joke on someone, because those are the only two reasons I would have starred in this movie.” Astin didn’t even get a chance to shine in the few parts he was in because of how god awful the rest of the cast was.
Don’t watch this movie. I really hate to trash talk something this badly, but it disappointed me so much. It had so much potential that with better acting, it could have truly rebooted the franchise, but so many bad decisions were made that there is nothing that could possibly fix this film except for recasting, rewriting, and filming the entire movie over again.
Stevie Kopas, Managing Editor HMS
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