Cabin Fever: Patient Zero (2014)

Movie Info

I’ve got a winning smile!

A bachelor party to a remote Caribbean island turns to terror when a group of friends find the bodies of hundreds of dead fish in the area where they are snorkeling.  In the water lurks a virus that ravages those it touches and the infection is now spreading.  The key to the virus might be hidden in a secret government lab on the island and a patient named Porter (Sean Astin) who seems to have immunity to the plague.

Directed by Kaare Andrews, Cabin Fever:  Patient Zero is sometimes called Cabin Fever 3:  Patient Zero.  Following Cabin Fever 2:  Spring Fever in 2009, the movie was released straight-to-DVD and generally garnered negative reviews.

I was not a fan of the original Cabin Fever.  It was a movie with a squandered concept and no direction, and despite an obvious love of horror by Eli Roth, the movie was real letdown.  Cabin Fever:  Patient Zero has direction and story, but is more of the same leaving it a pretty dull watch.

Baby, I’ll make you scream all night!

The movie is often listed as a prequel to Cabin Fever, but I don’t know that it really is.  It references isolated outbreaks of the disease (of which Porter is a carrier but immune) and it gives no indication that Porter is going back to the woods to start the outbreak that happened in the first film.  The movie was intended to a prequel of sorts to a sequel that was to be shot back to back called Cabin Fever:  Outbreak, but Cabin Fever:  Outbreak fell through.

The cast is rather unimagined and Sean Astin (who could have brought some star power to the movie) has a rather small role that places in the movie only at the beginning and the end.  I assume that Astin would have been part of the next film, and he could have had a larger role, but as of now, that doesn’t appear to be happening.

Oh yeah, a women falling apart due to a flesh eating disease throwdown!

The movie relies heavily on gore and guts but the effects of the film look redundant from the previous entries.  Arms fall off, lips fall off, and heads cave in…it has been seen before (and still doesn’t make much sense…how can you talk perfectly without lips?)  I did like at least that the movie was set in the Dominican Republic…though no cabins were in sight.

Cabin Fever:  Patient Zero is slightly below average horror film.  I’m not a huge fan of the gore genre and prefer scares and jumps to blood and guts.  The movie has allegedly marked the end for the Cabin Fever franchise and like everything in Hollywood, the Cabin Fever film series is scheduled to be remade…yeah, like we needed that.

Related Links:

Cabin Fever (2002)

Cabin Fever 2:  Spring Fever (2009)