Cabin Fever
I figured as the second Cabin Fever film is due shortly I really should get around to watching the first. I'm glad I did. Especially as there were some good bits in the movie.
Now okay the plot has a number of elements that are more than familiar - a group of city kids heading for the sticks to party in a remote cabin (surely they should know), some small town hick types who seem out for mayhem etc etc.
But in many ways the familiar actually works here. This is the kind of horror we grew up with. This is giving us fans of 1980s horror what we always liked and doing it well.
And, and this is the clincher, within the familiar plot structure the filmmakers have given us a darn good "big-bad". One that just about everyone will get a little bit worried by - flesh eating viruses. We live in a world where there's a new health scare every year - Ebola, Bird Flu, Sars, Swine - you come up with a new mystery "we're all going to die" disease and we'll panic about it.
Now I'm not trying to belittle these diseases, after all many, many people do actually die in these outbreaks. But when it comes to it we live in a place where the media seems to almost wet themselves when there's a sniff of a new microscopic killer. Show me a new virus and I'll show you a thousand headlines warning us that the end of the world is nigh!
Ok, maybe I am exaggerating. But in terms of this movie what I mean is that they hit on a real zeitgeist moment here. And it helps that it's a pretty good movie too I suppose.
So now I want the sequel.
Now okay the plot has a number of elements that are more than familiar - a group of city kids heading for the sticks to party in a remote cabin (surely they should know), some small town hick types who seem out for mayhem etc etc.
But in many ways the familiar actually works here. This is the kind of horror we grew up with. This is giving us fans of 1980s horror what we always liked and doing it well.
And, and this is the clincher, within the familiar plot structure the filmmakers have given us a darn good "big-bad". One that just about everyone will get a little bit worried by - flesh eating viruses. We live in a world where there's a new health scare every year - Ebola, Bird Flu, Sars, Swine - you come up with a new mystery "we're all going to die" disease and we'll panic about it.
Now I'm not trying to belittle these diseases, after all many, many people do actually die in these outbreaks. But when it comes to it we live in a place where the media seems to almost wet themselves when there's a sniff of a new microscopic killer. Show me a new virus and I'll show you a thousand headlines warning us that the end of the world is nigh!
Ok, maybe I am exaggerating. But in terms of this movie what I mean is that they hit on a real zeitgeist moment here. And it helps that it's a pretty good movie too I suppose.
So now I want the sequel.
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