Cabin Fever: Patient Zero

I was immediately struck by the high production quality, surprisingly so. It has eerie COVID foreshadowing. I had mild familiarity with the plot of The Last of Us (2013) with added boredom before the outbreak. The first half hour is pretty pointless but after that is surprisingly entertaining, it’s not a classic or even as memorable as the first two but not as bad as I was expecting. I loved how it used mostly practical effects, I didn’t notice any CGI. You might as well watch this one if you’ve seen the first two. I wish the ending had explained the origins and connections a little better. Oh well.

I don't usually date my reviews, but it is enough to check the date I'm writing to see that the theme of this film - a global pandemic - has never seemed as topical as it has been. Of course, the current pandemic is not even similar to what this film shows, and thank goodness! This film should be a logical continuation of the story told in the first two films of "Cabin Fever". However, this is not the case. Personally, I didn't find any kind of connection between the story told in this film and the story that was told in the two films mentioned. It is unfortunate, because I feel that the use of the same name ends up being almost a fraud, an act of deceptive advertising. The story of this film revolves around a small group of young people who are celebrating the imminent wedding of one of them with a boat trip through the islands of the Dominican Republic. We quickly realized the personalities of each of them and an ill-resolved romance between two of them that results in a love triangle... but none of this is sufficiently explored by the script. When everything seemed fine, and they find a desert island with empty beaches - the dream of any traveler in those places - they end up being infected by the carnivorous virus that we already knew from previous films, and that nobody knew how to explain to me how the hell it ended up in the Caribbean. There is also a mysterious laboratory on that island where a group of doctors and scientists seems to be committed to the discovery of a vaccine for the virus using a patient who has mysteriously acquired immunity to its effect. I think that, at some point, director Kaare Andrews made the mistake of taking himself (and his film) too seriously. He seemed like a novice director, and in fact this was his second feature film. I don't know if I could demand much more from him, but the fact is that the film doesn't work and the feeling that it takes itself too seriously is irritating. As if it was not enough to have no connection with the previous films! Personally, I think the film would have been much more interesting and appealing if it had been conceived as a black comedy or a satire. Something that was not so serious and made us laugh a little. I believe that, even so, it will please gore fans, because it is virtually full of people vomiting liters of blood and guts, not to mention an oral sex scene that promises to make many people vomits over their popcorn. The cast is forgettable, as you can imagine in a film like this, and the characters were designed to die, so we can't expect much from them. Sean Astin, the eternal Sam of "Lord of the Rings", seems to have shot his own career by deciding to appear in such a film, but the fact is that he ends up being the only actor who give us what we could call acting. Currie Graham is a predictable villain, Ryan Donowho and Brando Eaton do what they have to do but do not escape their characters' clichés; Jillian Murray and Lydia Hearst are just there because they have big boobs to show off for the camera. And was I the only one to feel some sexual chemistry between the characters of Graham and Hearst? Technically, its a low-budget film that, even so, bets seriously on the effects that involve blood and pieces of human bodies, with some good results. The makeup team also deserves a praise for the good work and the realism of the wounds and the rotting flesh. Cinematography fulfills its role, but without anything that seems worth noting. The sets and costumes are more or less what we could be expecting.