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| All Images Courtesy: Cleopatra Entertainment |
Just in time for the actual weekend when the film is set, Cleopatra Entertainment brings us the disc debut of the new microbudget indie cabin-in-the-woods horror film Fear Cabin: The Last Weekend of Summer. While clearly a true DIY affair made with very limited resources, it is also a film obviously made with great love for the horror genre, and with ambition to stretch beyond its budget in terms of cinematography and effects. It certainly does not break new ground, and it has plenty of the predictable limitations and flaws that one might expect from this kind of microbudget feature, but there is fun to be had in Fear Cabin. For some insane reason that I cannot for the life of me understand, in this year 2025, Cleopatra has decided to release this film only on DVD, and not on blu-ray – despite the film having clearly been shot in HD, and despite it being a pretty good-looking movie for its budget (definitely a better and better-looking film than a couple other Cleopatra screeners I’ve watched that were on blu-ray). It’s a baffling choice that there is really no excuse for, and I suspect that it will limit the audience of people willing to take a chance on something like this. But don’t be put off by standard def release – let’s take a visit to Fear Cabin and see whether or not it’s worth the trip!
THE FILM:
A group of college-age friends (including writer/director/stunt coordinator Brian Krainson) rent a cabin in the woods for a weekend-long end-of-summer party. But sinister warnings from the cabin’s weird owner (Jeremy London of Mallrats fame), a hidden graveyard in the woods, and the discovery by one of the friends of a creepy book of spells get the weekend off to a foreboding start. It soon becomes apparent that they are not alone at the cabin: the house is haunted by the vengeful ghost of a witch who was hanged there long ago, and they have become the latest target of her wrath. What follows is a combination of haunted-house movie and supernatural slasher, and Krainson and company pay homage to their favorite elements of both genres.
The story is clearly not original, nor does it seem like it’s trying to be; it is very openly a pastiche of elements from other classic horror films that inspired it, most obviously The Evil Dead and various isolated-cabin slashers. It’s the sort of film where originality is clearly not the point; having fun with the tropes and seeing what these filmmakers can do with the formula is. It must, however, be said that playing these tropes with a straight face feels like a very difficult task when this exact formula was already perfectly parodied in the meta horror/comedy classic Cabin in the Woods a decade and a half ago. Fear Cabin plays it straight, with no winking postmodern humor, but it is hard not to chuckle a bit when, for instance, Jeremy London shows up as the exact embodiment of the “creepy local guy giving vague ominous warnings” Harbinger archetype that we have seen satirized many times now. But while the tropes may not be played for laughs, the film is clearly aware that we know all of these tropes, and is happy to speed past them to get to the good stuff. Things are wisely getting spooky by the 15-minute-mark, in the movie’s very lean 70-ish minute runtime.
Krainson is primarily a stunt coordinator and performer, so his expertise is definitely on the technical end of things, and that is where Fear Cabin most impresses, with how far it stretches its obviously-DIY budget. The ghostly attacks in the cabin are brought to life with quite a bit of wirework, to achieve flying and levitation effects and give some teeth to possession sequences. There are also a few times when the film employs physical stunts, so Krainson can show off those skills. While plenty of low-budget films like this would lean on questionable green-screen for things like ghostly levitation, or would just avoid using complicated tricks like that at all, Fear Cabin employing tangible practical effects wherever possible really elevates it, and goes a long way to demonstrate the effort that its filmmakers are putting in. They are clearly trying to show off all the contents of their bag of tricks to set their film apart from the million other microbudget horror films out there, and I give them a lot of credit for that.
The movie also distinguishes itself in the cinematography department. Fear Cabin is quite well-shot for a microbudget film, with a lot of strong shot compositions that were clearly well thought-out. The film also makes substantial use of a drone, to get very cool shots swooping around the actors, or very polished establishing visuals, which also lends it a lot of extra production value. This is a much better-shot movie than most DIY horror films, showing that you don’t need money to have a strong eye for visuals, and a strong knowledge of what to do with whatever camera you can afford to work with.
Fear Cabin’s budget does rear its head in other ways. The acting is a very mixed bag, ranging from quite good to fairly bad. The period costuming and set dressing in the flashback sequences isn’t particularly convincing, and those are the sequences that the film has the hardest time selling. And while originality is definitely not the point of the film, the script is utilitarian at best, and is not particularly well-written. In general it definitely has many of the typical flaws or shortcomings that one might expect from a truly homegrown DIY production, and the degree to which you enjoy it and have a good time with it definitely will depend on your tolerance for microbudget films and how forgiving you are of these flaws.
Personally though, I have no trouble at all cutting a DIY production some slack and meeting the film on its own level when the passion of the filmmakers is obvious, and you can tell that they were really trying to stretch their resources as much as possible to make the best movie they could. I find films like this pretty easy to root for because of the DIY passion involved, despite the obvious limitations. The effort in Fear Cabin is clear, and the film is successful in at least some areas, and Krainson and company definitely deserve credit for that. What they’ve pulled off here is pretty impressive, all things considered, especially where the practical wirework effects and cinematography are concerned. If you’re a fan of microbudget indies and enjoy seeing what homegrown groups of filmmakers are capable of achieving with little money but plenty of technical skill and love for the horror genre, then I would recommend checking out Fear Cabin. I genuinely had a fun time watching this one.
THE DISC:
Fear Cabin comes to us on a DVD – yes, just a DVD, no blu-ray, in 2025 – from Cleopatra. While some will immediately turn up their nose at the thought of an SD disc release, the movie actually looks quite good on the disc. The bitrate is solid, so there is no problematic pixelization or blocking, and the detail is as strong as possible. It’s a totally fine release, and gets the job done. It is bizarre that Cleopatra didn’t release this one on blu-ray though, since it is a pretty good-looking movie for what it is, and is certainly better – both in look and quality of film – than others that Cleopatra has deemed worthy of a blu-ray release. I don’t understand their thinking here. But it is what it is, and the disc looks perfectly fine.
It even has a couple pretty solid extras, in the form of a brief but quite interesting behind-the-scenes featurette, which shows how some of the film’s effects were done, and a brief introduction to the film by the director.
It’s a modest but solid DVD from Cleopatra, for an unassuming and very DIY film that I found pretty impressive and quite fun. If you’re a fan of this type of homegrown horror, give it a look! You just might find Fear Cabin worth a visit.
- Christopher S. Jordan
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