Label: Scream Factory / IFC Midnight
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 93 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Stereo 2.0, Surround 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.40:1)
Director: Travis Z
Cast: Lin Shaye, Gabrielle Haugh, Grayson Gabriel, Emily Haine, Louise Linton, Michael Sirow, Robert Englund
From director Travis Z (the Cabin Fever remake) comes yet another remake - this time it's a remake of an Irish supernatural chiller, the film opens in 1953 where we find three young children playing a strange board game in a mansion, an occult game with a very specific set of rules which when executed properly summons a demonic urban legend named The Midnight Man, who stalks you around the house until a certain time, preying in your deepest fears. Game night ends with two of the children dead, one is gruesomely decapitated while the other pops like a blood-filled zit outside the home, spraying blood over the snow-covered lawn. It's honestly a pretty fantastic little opening with some surprising gore. From here we go modern day, we have teenager Alex (Gabrielle Haugh) caring for her senile granny Anna (Lin Shaye, Insidious) at the very same mansion from the open of the film, in fact in turns out that granny is the lone survivor of that gruesome night.
While rummaging through the attic of the home Alex and her friend Miles (Grayson Gabriel) stumble across a strange box hidden away inside a trunk, inside it they find the Midnight Game game complete with written instructions, and decide have a go at it, even after granny catches them in the act and nearly strokes out at the sight of the game, you think that would warn them off of it, but nope, they go forward, even after having to call a doctor to check in on granny, by the way the doc is played by horror legend Robert Englund (A Nightmare on Elm Street), not that it matters. Despite being incredibly complicated with it's myriad of rules involving protective circles of salt, knocking on doors and keeping candles lit, they start the game, and also invite their friend Kelly (Emily Haine) over to play, and she's totally into it, she immediately drops some creepy[pasta knowledge on them, already aware of the game, but as expected she's just more meat for the demonic-game grinder.
The movie is well-made and attractively shot, but the story is too been-there-and-done-that, and don't even get me started on character motivations, I don't know what any of these people were even thinking, the game is so hard to get going I never would have gotten it started, let alone having to worry about the elderly relative you're supposed to be taking care of! I do have a soft spot for urban legends and folkloric horror though, so I did enjoy the premise to a degree and I like the look of the cloaked reptilian Midnight Man, but the rules as complicated as they were didn't seem to matter all that much when it's revealed that the demon regularly cheats anyway!
This is not a horrible movie, but it's perhaps something worse than horrible, it's largely forgettable, pissing away the considerable talents of Lin Shaye and Robert Englund with poorly written characters. I could see this getting some play on Netflix on a night when nothing else presents itself as viable entertainment, but it's not a movie you're gonna be sitting around turning your friends onto at some later date, you're gonna forget about it an hour later, and someday think to yourself, "what was that one lackluster movie with Lin Shaye and Robert Englund?", and you definitely won't remember the name, because there are at least four other movies with the same generic name, and there will probably be four more by the time you think about this movie again.
This is another one of the IFC Midnight/Scream Factory titles, they're very hit and miss for me so far, for every The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016) there's four of these. The single-disc Blu-ray includes a trailer for the film and the original Irish film from 2013 which I think is cool that they included, but given that I didn't enjoy the remake all that much I don't know when or if I would ever make the time to watch the original. This release also includes a sleeve of reversible artwork and a slipcover, I'm curious to know how it is decided over at Scream Factory which releases are deserving of a reversible wrap and a slipcover,
Like the Cabin Fever remake, also directed by Traviz Z, this one is not awful but it's not anything you're gonna be thinking about afterward. I give it that it's a well-made film, the visuals look good, but there no substance, there's nothing original about it, which make The Midnight Man a proverbial one and done for me.
CABIN FEVER (2016)
Label: Scream Factory I IFC Midnight
Release Date: July 5th 2016
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 99 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.40:1)
Director: Travis Z
Cast: Dustin Ingram, Gage Golightly, Matthew Daddario, Nadine Crocker, Samuel Davis
Synopsis: Executive producer Eli Roth presents this reboot of his instant-classic gorefest, which features all-new characters and all-new kills. The story is familiar: Fresh out of college, a group of five friends retreat to a remote cabin in the woods for one last week of partying – only to become snacks for a gruesome, flesh-eating virus. This fresh spin on a horror-comedy milestone stars Gage Golightly (Exeter, Teen Wolf), Nadine Crocker (Deadgirl), Samuel Davis (Machete Kills, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For) and Dustin Ingram (Paranormal Activity 3).
In 2002 Eli Roth brought us the original Cabin Fever (2002), a lo-fi gory delight full of dark humor, a flesh-eating virus, and enough stupidity that it brought a smile to my face in the cinema. It was a refreshingly old school and stupid slice of splatter-horror that had been long missing from the cinemas, and sort of ushered in a new era of cinema-gore in the early 2000s. The movie spawned a pair of sequels by way of the goofy and gross Cabin Fever 2: Spring Break (2009) and Cabin Fever: Patient Zero (2014). The the series never picked up traction the way of say the Wrong Turn movies as a b-tier franchise but I must say I enjoyed both. Spring Fever was directed by Ti West who disowned the movie after reshoots and producer tinkering, but I still loved it for how innapprorpiate and gross it was, a gory mess of a movie. Patient Zero was not spectacular but also a good gory watch. I think what Roth has in mind with this reboot is to start a new franchise with a bit more cohesion than what came before it. I might be wrong about that but what other reason could there be for rebooting a movie just fourteen years old... besides money.
The movie uses the same script as the original Cabin Fever, featuring five 20-somethings who head out to a cabin in the woods to celebrate graduation. There they make fun of the locals, get stoned, drink some beers, have sex and fall victim to a nasty flesh-eating virus that causes them to rot from the inside and turn to on one another, being young and selfish the virus causes each of their worst qualities to emerge as they throw each other under the bus in hopes of surviving longer than the other.
Using the same script we get a lot of familiar dialogue coming from actors who are decent but pale in comparison to the original cast in my opinion, they're not awful, not all of them anyway... but the comedy and dark humor is toned down which turns this formerly splatteriffic-comedy to a mostly humorlous action horror movie of a sort, and I think I missed the humor more than anything else.
They do bring the gore though, there's a decent amount of skin-crawling grossness to go around, we have the familiar blood-fingering, the tragic leg shaving scene, the infected spewing a geyser of blood from their mouths, some good stuff. Another familiar scenario involves a dog tearing apart an unfortunate rotter, that happens off camera and we are only privy to the screams and the aftermath, if you're gonna remake something stupid and gross I say go all the way with it, amp it up and push the boundaries, and they just didn't do it. That being said, they do give us some great shots of the infected dogs who are starting to rot away and are acting rabid, but the when they tear apart someone off screen that bothered me. The movie is attractively shot in the scope aspect ration with very nice cinematography, there's even a nice homage to Kubrick's The Shining at the top of the film, complete with a borrowed music cue.
As the reboot happens fourteen years after the original they do cram a bit too much of the 'what no cell reception', 'I can't play games?' and 'are you kidding me, no wi-fi' which did get annoying. As I said before the characters sort of just regurgitate familiar dialogie but the comedy is toned way way down, and that didn't work for me. The most notable change is that they made Deputy Winston who was portrayed by Giuseppe Andrews in the first movie into a woman, now played by Louise Linton, who plays it weird but nowhere near as memorable as Giuseppe Andrews. What they did right was fill out the movie with smokin' hot chics, we have Gage Golightly of Teen Wolf and Nadine Crocker - the latter of whom drops her clothes in not one but two scenes, and she's very easy on the eyes.
The local rednecks are not as fun this time around, the strange kid Dennis doesn't yell "pancakes" either, but we do get a pancake reference which might explain why the kid in the original film kept yelling it. Also missed is the crazy king-fu action Dennis throws out in the original movie, this time he just sort of seems like a boring extras from the movie Gummo.
Special Features
- The Making Of Cabin Fever Featurette
- Theatrical Trailer
I don't hate this movie, taken on its own merits it has a lot to offer, damn decent production value and cinematography, the cast is decent, the script is now worse than the original with a few modern updates and the gore is nothing to sneeze at, Now as a reboot it doesn't offer anything new, so I have to ask why even make it, why not pump some of that cash into an original idea? As with any business it comes down to money and marketing and what horror fans are willing to spend some hard-earned dough on, and guess what, you cannot blame them for it. Maybe horror fans over the age of thirty might be put off by a Cabin Fever remake, but there are loads of millennials out there who didn't catch the original movie. These teen brats cannot be bothered to seek it out on their own, a movie from 2002 might as well be a black and might TV show from a bygone era to them, not all of them, but a lot. Maybe this new one will lure them in, and that's alright by me, you don't have to love the reboot, but if it turns a few new teens into horror fans that's good for everyone. Cabin Fever '16 is not a bad movie, it's not a great reboot, but taken on its own it offers some good gore and cheap frights that go down easy with a few beers and doesn't require a lot of thought, just like the first one.
This is not a horrible movie, but it's perhaps something worse than horrible, it's largely forgettable, pissing away the considerable talents of Lin Shaye and Robert Englund with poorly written characters. I could see this getting some play on Netflix on a night when nothing else presents itself as viable entertainment, but it's not a movie you're gonna be sitting around turning your friends onto at some later date, you're gonna forget about it an hour later, and someday think to yourself, "what was that one lackluster movie with Lin Shaye and Robert Englund?", and you definitely won't remember the name, because there are at least four other movies with the same generic name, and there will probably be four more by the time you think about this movie again. 
Like the Cabin Fever remake, also directed by Traviz Z, this one is not awful but it's not anything you're gonna be thinking about afterward. I give it that it's a well-made film, the visuals look good, but there no substance, there's nothing original about it, which make The Midnight Man a proverbial one and done for me. 
