Braced for a scare and armed with popcorn, about 20 community members gathered for a special screening of “Cabin Fever” (2016) at the Oxford Community Arts Center.
They watched as five naive college students traveled to a remote cabin with hopes of having a relaxing week of swimming and partying. They found the cabin to have no internet, phone service or landline – and then the flesh-eating virus struck.
In the center of the very back row of the theater room, where he could note the crowd’s scattered laughter, disgust and awe, sat the film’s director, Travis Zariwny.
“You see what works and doesn’t,” he said. “Sometimes they were laughing at things that I wouldn’t laugh at. But there were also times where jokes fell flat and nothing happened.”
The film received a fair share of laughs from the crowd, along with collective jumps and yelps at virus-infected skin and body parts that seemed to wipe away or fall off.
Paul Bingle said he came to the event to interact with the director of a horror movie.
“I’ve been a horror fan my entire life and it’s kind of a neat opportunity,” Bingle said.
The film is a remake of a 2002 film of the same name. The 2002 film was directed by well-known horror director Eli Roth and received a 62% Tomato Meter score on Rotten Tomatoes. Zariwny’s version has a 0% Tomato Meter score.
“It was like nuclear, I got zero on Rotten Tomatoes,” he said. “And I’m on lists of like the worst directors in the world because of that one movie.”
Zariwny, originally from Oregon, was in Oxford working on the Alarum set as a production designer. He said that once he gets home, he’ll get right back to work.
“I will work in production design and then on my off time, write and set up the next project or tweak my existing projects,” Zariwny said.
Zariwny said “Cabin Fever” took two years to make and 20 days to film. Some reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes were vicious.
“Roth’s charcoal sense of humor is missing the cruel irony lacking its hellish zing,” a top critic on rotten tomatoes, Nick Allen, wrote.
“This dude sets a new standard for the term ‘pointless remake,’” wrote Geoff Berkshire from Variety, another Rotten Tomatoes top critic.
Bingle owned the original “Cabin Fever” (2002) film and watched it multiple times. He only knew of the 2016 remake by Zariwny because of marketing for the event. He said Zariwny’s version seemed more modern and gory.
“Some of the characters were a little different,” Bingle Said. “He made Paul a little meaner, a little more aggressive from the beginning. About when the bad stuff started happening it sort of became a pretty much straightforward remake.”
Zariwny blames negative criticism on Roth’s following.
“The fan base for Eli killed it on the internet,” Zariwny said.“Which is just another reason for everybody to just trust in yourself as a filmmaker.”
He said he tries to ignore critics and encouraged community members in attendance to do the same.
“Nobody should do art for fans,” Zariwny said. “You should do art for yourself. It’s more important to pursue your dreams and your art and not worry about critics. Don’t write for an audience, you write for yourself working in the moment creatively.”
