

The fact of the matter is that the characters in this movie are just really poorly written and quite unlikable. They're very content to play into those tired genre cliches. And, really, after Cabin in the Woods, you can't just offer this concept up without at least attempting to subvert some of the tropes associated with this set-up, but they don't. They are the stereotypical teens going out to a cabin in the forest/woods you've seen time and time again. Problem is just the fact that you never, at any point in time, care about any of these characters.

The movie is going for something along those same lines and, well, it just doesn't work. The characters in The Thing don't know who the monster is and that creates mistrust in a very claustrophobic setting, which certainly didn't help matters. What I mean is that the idea of paranoia as a result of the fact that you don't know who has the virus is very similar to The Thing, where this.monster is able to mimic human beings perfectly. I realize that that's probably the first, and only time, anyone will ever compare this to one of the classics. Conceptually, the movie plays out very much like Carpenter's The Thing. The problem, of course, is everything else. Watching the flesh-eating virus as it takes effect over our characters is a joy to watch. I don't think the practical effects are ever as gruesome as those in Patient Zero and it feels like to give the appearance that this was a better film than it actually was, but it's still really damn strong. And, if there was only one expectation I came into with this movie, was for it to have quality blood and gore and, honestly, the movie definitely delivered on that. Shame they were servicing a movie that was, largely, not very good. It was really impressive for what, essentially, was a low-budget direct-to-video affair. I wouldn't go out of my way to say that that was a good movie, but I felt that it had tremendous practical special and make-up effects. I'll be honest, the only other Cabin Fever movie I watched (there's two more, if you weren't aware), was Patient Zero. No one had anything positive to say about this movie. I'm honestly surprised that, out of 28 reviews on RottenTomatoes, there was not a single positive one.
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The pointof the matter is that this really is an absolutely unnecessary update of the original movie and, quite frankly, it's worse than the original. I only watched it the one time in the theaters and I would welcome a re-watch.

Honestly, as much as I've enjoyed some Eli Roth movies, as far as I remember, I wasn't that big of a fan of the original Cabin Fever. That would actually be a pretty cool idea. Which, I'm assuming, has a big cult following and it can be a merging of two different generations of horror fans, those who watched the movie when it first came out (I was a part of that, I was 14 when the original came out) and those who want to experience it for themselves for the first time because they may have been too young to watch it. If the idea was to bring the Cabin Fever story to a new generation of horror fans, given that, again, at that point, almost half a decade had passed between movies, then why not just do a re-release of the original. Quite possibly the most unnecessary horror remake in quite some time. And then, a couple of days after that movie, I end up watching this. I remember talking, in my Mad Money review, about how, while there are still remakes left and right in Hollywood, they aren't as bad or as prevalent now as they were in the past. I think that's just way too short of a time to wait for a remake, to be perfectly honest. At the point of this movie's release, 14 years had passed between the original movie and its remake.
