Patient Zero is a fine addition to a franchise which has been in remission for too long. Furthermore, while the island setting is nice at first, it all too soon descends into pitch-black government basements and dingy corridors. Gory and practical, the effects do a fine job of portraying the virus at its most vicious, even if it does steer a little too close into well-trodden zombie territory for comfort. We all knew it was coming (again, no pun intended) but that doesn’t make it any less welcome. Case in point: the aforementioned big black dildo. A lot of it is predictably done (the guy going down on his infected girlfriend was never going to get a happy ending) but much of the entertainment in these films is in seeing the inevitable unfold. While it tells more or less the same story as Cabin Fever, there are enough grisly death sequences and nastier moments of body horror to justify its existence. Frodo/Samwise Gamgee bromance) but he does lend this straight to DVD sequel a sense of legitimacy sorely lacking in most budget follow-ups to respected features. He’s not enough to draw an audience as such (save for fans of the Mr. In Sean Astin, Patient Zero has a respectable if slightly bizarre star name. There’s a distinct lack of Justin and Doctor Mambo, though, which is disappointing. Even better, it doesn’t have Giuseppe Andrews in it, whose dodgy performance should have been left as one brief scene in the first film, rather than extending into (and spoiling) its sequel. Similar in tone, style and pace to Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever, it’s a better companion piece to the original film, and far more watchable to boot. It’s a slicker, more professional looking movie, well-directed and acted throughout. Where Cabin Fever 2 was a low point in director Ti West’s so far illustrious career, Kaare Andrews’s Patient Zero is something of a return to form for the franchise. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is possibly the only time you’re going to see a reference to Anton Chekhov in relation to Cabin Fever 3… or giant rubber recreational devices, for that matter. Sure enough, the enormous rubber lovelength introduced in the film’s first act is used to particularly grisly effect during its (no pun intended) climax. Substitute that gun for a big black dildo, and you’ll find that Patient Zero follows Chekhov’s rule pretty rigidly. Idyllic, that is, until super-infectious Sean Astin (Samwise Gamgee himself, only wearing a beard) sets loose a particularly nasty strain of flesh-eating virus, well and truly ruining the holiday for everyone.ĭrama and film students will be familiar with the dramatic principle behind ‘Chekhov’s gun’, which decrees that, if you’re going to put a gun on the stage in the first act, you’d better have someone use it by the second. The world’s worst skin condition returns, trading in the cabin in the woods and the high school prom for an idyllic Caribbean island, where a quartet of pretty young things can be found celebrating one of their number’s impending nuptials.
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