Cabin Fever: Patient Zero

Yay, the Cabin Fever franchise continues! I guess that's what the makers of this movie were hoping horror fans would say ignoring the fact that basically no one liked the second movie, not even its director, and it's been 10 freaking years since the original and this only Pt. 3.

Cabin Fever Patient Zero looks to be the cheapest entry in the series, starting with a quartet of barely likable, uninteresting young people going on a small yacht, not a cruise ship as promotional material states, and ending up stranded on a beautiful, uncharted tropical island.

In the meantime, special guest star Sean Astin (The Lord of the Rings, Rudy) is the father of a dead infected kid who turns out to be immune and, now, is imprisoned indefinitely in a remote government research facility located on, you guessed it, that same uncharted tropical island.

Cabin Fever 3 needs something more. Made on such a low budget, this movie needed A LOT of personality to work and, sadly, it just doesn't have it. There are some down and dirty fun moments, some legitimately stomach churning, shocking gore moments with great makeup effects, but these moments are few and far between. Too much of the movie comes down to dull characters wondering around and doing stupid things that don't make much sense until they finally die.

In terms of production values, this movie looks like a Sy Fy original and while it's not nearly that bad, it just isn't that good either. It's more serious in tone than either previous film, but closer in feel to the original. It lacks Pt. 1's zany, retro spirit though. Cabin Fever 3 isn't terrible. It's actually better than I thought it would be and I'm being a little charitable with my rating because I suspect it could have been better if they had a bigger budget. But they didn't, and I can say this movie is just barely worth seeing.

After wasting over an hour of my life on this (yep my own fault entirely) I felt compelled to write a review to save others doing the same. This is without doubt one of the worst movies I've watched in a very very long time. It really is genuinely, absolutely dreadful, with no redeeming features whatsoever. The acting is simply awful - some of the worst I've witnessed in ages, the plot is nonsense, the "make-up effects" are laughable and the whole thing reeks of amateur trash. Put these things all together and you've got yourself an absolute stinker, and that is exactly what this is. Don't waste your time on it, trust me, you'll regret it.

I watched this gore-fest with little expectations after the second Cabin Fever. Even with low expectations, I was disappointed.

The plot is thin, the pace is slow, the horror is limited, the characters are not interesting and most of what happens makes little to no sense once you have accepted that the disease is real. The virus reacts so differently from a person to another that it's just ridiculous how one victim gets Deadly sick within a few minutes while others take hours before having serious symptoms. The security issues around a facility of that nature are laughable at best and the people working there seem to be hired on a good-looks basis only.

Sean Astin is good, but his part is small and his lines are cliché.

I also had an issue with the most gruesome action scenes where I had a hard time understanding what was happening. As it's often the case in many movies, the quick cut from an angle to another to prevent us from noticing how low budget some FX are makes it difficult to comprehend what they are really doing. Lighting in some scenes is horrible too.

It's still enjoyable for some horrific scenes, but overall, this is not a good movie.

Cabin fever 2 was equally bad. Cabin Fever (the original movie) was campy and kind of good, even though it was by no standards great.

Cabin Fever: Patient Zero (2014)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

The third film in the series has a group of friends in the Dominican Republic where one of them is getting married. The day before the wedding a group of four decide to go to a secret island and relax. What they don't know is that a scientist is there doing experiments on the skin-eating virus and soon the visitors are contaminated.

CABIN FEVER: PATIENT ZERO is a pretty disappointing sequel that commits the biggest sin any horror movie can and that's the fact that it's just downright boring. Neither of the previous two films were all that good but they were at least entertaining. Sadly that's not the case here as the story is fairly weak and there's really no character that you like or really want to see survive.

Of course, one of the main attractions to a film like this is going to be the gore/kill scenes. The special effects here aren't nearly as impressive but for the most part they're good enough and there's quite a bit of blood puking and body parts falling off. The performances for the most part are good enough and we even have Sean Astin playing the patient zero.

If you're a fan of the first two then you'll probably be curious about this one but it's best you just skip it.

The third entry in the Cabin Fever franchise was undoubtedly a disgusting mistake.

With the attempt to elaborate the origins of the bacterial plague that was previously unanswered in past entires, it offers an overly bloated and convoluted story with nothing special aside being absolutely disgusting. Although not as grotesque as the franchise's second entry, it continues retaining the exhausting nastiness its predecessors began.

The biggest unforgivable dilemma with this film, aside from everything else, was its merged storytelling with two separate situations. These events are intended to conjoin answers but merely create further questions and flaws. Its introduction becomes the film's main subplot and had more interesting scenery than the film's main focus. Despite that, almost none of the characters are likable or tolerable, the elongated and senseless disposable scenes are immediately annoying, and the film dares to become an exciting thriller during its final act.

It's absolutely revolting, stupid, and a waste of contaminated water.