Look, the original Cabin Fever, although I do love it dearly, is a mediocre film, at best. Released in 2002 and directed by Eli Roth, Cabin Fever follows a group of college grads to a cabin for a vacation and, while there, they contract a flesh-eating virus. In 2016, the film was remade, and I’ll dive into that in a moment.

2002’s Cabin Fever was Eli Roth’s directorial debut. It was also one of the first projects Rider Strong starred in after Boy Meets World ended in 2000. And, I have a suspicion that he is one of the reason’s this film doesn’t get completely panned. Well, that and Roth’s boldness to just do whatever he wants with his films (which I admire greatly). In terms of language, this film has definitely not aged well, with remarks like “because they’re gay” and “Don’t be a retard”. Honestly, I cringed. This film has early 2000s blindness all over it. Setting that aside, Cabin Fever is entertaining. The scene where Marcy shaves her legs and her skin begins to come off, and for whatever reason she keeps shaving still haunts me to this day.

That brings me to the 2016 remake, directed by Travis Zariwny. Now, I watched these films back to back. I did not take a break between and I had never watched the remake before. So, you can imagine my surprise when I find out that the 2016 remake of Cabin Fever is line for line the same film as the 2002 version. I found this particularly infuriating. It just reminded me of Gus Van Sant’s shot for shot remake of Psycho starring Vince Vaughan as Norman Bates. Why would somebody do this!? Why would somebody put so much time and effort into making a film that is nearly identical to a previous one? Why would a studio spend the money? In regard to Cabin Fever, I suppose it was remade at a time when horror remakes were still kind of popular. Although, I think by 2016, that had started to fade out. Which then baffles me even further, especially because the actual script for Cabin Fever isn’t that great. It’s fairly basic. The only differences in this 2016 version was that some of the roles were gender swapped, and there was more nudity. It’s been almost a week now, and I still can’t get over this. It is the exact same film. Think of all the other movies that money could have gone towards. Shit.