It
is a horror franchise that already has quite a checkered history. Eli Roth made
his name with the original Cabin Fever,
but Ti West (then an up-and-coming young horror auteur) unsuccessfully lobbied
to have his name taken off Cabin Fever 2:
Spring Fever. A comic-book artist like Kaare Andrews might sound like a
promising candidate to breathe new life into the prequel, but it is still
pretty much the same skin-sloughing viral business as usual in his Cabin Fever: Patient Zero (trailer here), which opens
today in New York.
Not
to be hopelessly pedantic, but there is no cabin in Zero. Instead, our young and dumb partiers are out for some fun in
the Caribbean sun. For his last minute bachelor night, Marcus’s hopelessly irresponsible
brother Josh, his business partner Dobbs, and Josh’s girlfriend Penny have
whisked him off for a night of hedonism on an uncharted island. Of course,
there are no phones or radios to interrupt the good times. After all, what
could go wrong, even if the numbskulls somehow managed to pick the one deserted
island with an apparently abandoned research facility on the opposite end of
the coast?
For
a while, Andrews lets the camera ogle Penny’s bikini body (she is played by
Jillian Murray, the co-star of the straight-to-DVD sequel Wild Things: Foursome, if that means anything to you). Although Penny
is hooking up with Josh, she has some steamy history with Marcus as well. As
awkward as that is for all involved, their problems are about to get a whole
magnitude worse. After swimming in the viral infected water, Penny and Josh
start developing some nasty rashes. It progresses rapidly. Seeking help in the
not-so abandoned laboratory, Josh and Dobbs encounter some rabid victims of the
virus, the sociopathic Dr. Edwards, and Porter, the naturally immune Patient
Zero.
Basically,
Zero is all about its gross-out, face-dripping,
bloody projectile-vomiting effects, but the lighting is often so low, it is
hard to get a clear picture of the gore. The acting is not exactly any great
shakes here, even from Sean Astin, a.k.a. Rudy,
as the increasingly resentful Porter. Mitch Ryan is ridiculously bland as
Marcus, but he is easier to take than the annoying mugging indulged by Brando
Eaton’s Josh. At least, Murray delivers what is expected of her, falling to
pieces (literally) rather well, all things considered.
