Review of Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (2009) by Rosemarie S — 19 Apr 2010

To make a sequel to a film that was released six years prior is sort of a risky affair. Will anyone remember the original film? Will there still be an audience willing to sit through a sequel? Is the franchise relevant anymore? â??The Evil Deadâ?? managed to spawn a successful sequel, â??Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawnâ??, after a six year gap, but is a â??Cabin Feverâ?? sequel necessary or relevant? Could it be entertaining, or better than the first? Oh yes, yes, yes.

I was originally put off by the fact that Eli Roth wasnâ??t involved in the sequel, and a new director, Ti West, who I will discuss later on, was appointed. I felt that â??Cabin Feverâ?? was a fantastic, darkly comedic first time feature film effort by Roth. It had a fairly standard setup involving college kids on vacation, with a gloriously disgusting development involving the spread of a flesh-eating virus via water. It was generally well done and a fairly impressive attempt by a first time director. My only issue with â??Cabin Feverâ?? was that it mashed comedy with scattered forays into serious territory far too often, making me wish they stuck to one approach over the other. â??Cabin Fever 2: Spring Feverâ?? gets it just right by sticking to flat out dark humor, crass sexual comedy, and splattery body horrors.

â??Cabin Fever 2: Spring Feverâ?? picks up almost exactly at the last few moments of â??Cabin Feverâ??. The infected water of the kooky, slightly backwards, boondocks town is being trucked out to the townspeople and apparently, Rider Strong, the hero character from â??Cabin Feverâ??, managed to survive (even though he was shown to be face down, dead, in a lake in the ending of the first film) and tries making it out of the woods only to end up being struck and killed (more like splattered really) by a school bus as part of the filmâ??s title sequence. Itâ??s quite gross, and a good precursor for whatâ??s to come â?? because things get even nastier.

The refreshingly original setup in this movie (prom night at a high school in a slightly hick town) is one of its strong points and the actors (Marc Senter, Giuseppe Andrews, Noah Segan) make the film a worthwhile watch. During the prom night festivities, infected water begins taking its toll on the high school students until some unnamed and unseen military force crashes the prom and basically â??quarantinesâ?? everyone the safe way â?? with death. The film has a fairly continuous flow that is mildly marred by some questionably editing and a go nowhere subplot involving Giuseppe Andrewsâ?? kooky town deputy character trying to evade an unnamed military force which may or may not have anything to do with that weird hospital scene in the original â??Cabin Feverâ??. Another disruption in the film (although whether this will bother you or not is purely subjective) is the fact that the film has no real ending per say. The hero male character (played by horror babe Noah Segan, who you may remember as the bad guy from â??Deadgirlâ??) ends up infected and virtually left for dead, while the final girl (a dead ringer for Sissy Spacek) just sort of rides off with the town deputy to what is, presumably, the state line or the outskirts of town (although this plan is never really discussed, and the girl just basically jumps into the deputyâ??s pickup truck â?? sort of like the ending in â??The Texas Chainsaw Massacreâ?? but not as nail-bitingly tense). And instead of a flash forward ending showing what happens to the characters who may or may not have survived the prom night massacre, we get a â??meanwhile, back in some random strip barâ?? ending where a fairly minor character (Noah Seganâ??s memorable best friendsâ?? â??girlfriendâ??) is shown working as a stripper and spreading her STD-like infection to a plethora of customers and co-workers, which leads to an unnecessary cartoon montage of the disease spreading to Mexico via two strip bar patrons who happened to catch the fever. I was also peeved that they had another instance involving the appearance of some mysterious, unrevealed person in a bunny suit (a la â??Cabin Feverâ??) and they once again failed to reveal their identity (at least this time the bunny can be assumed to be a school mascot, whereas in â??Cabin Feverâ?? it was just aâ?¦ guy in a bunny suitâ?¦ randomly standing in a hospitalâ?¦).

While in â??Cabin Feverâ?? the illness caught by the vacationing students was more or less an allegory for revealing oneâ??s dark side and releasing pent up emotions (best exemplified with Rider Strongâ??s sexual frustration throughout the whole movie and his rage towards being rejected by his â??just a friendâ?? female friend) â??Cabin Fever 2: Spring Feverâ?? is more or less an allegory for STDs, their disturbing effects on the human bodyâ??s sexual parts and the repercussions for teenagers engaging in casual sex. I wasnâ??t really exaggerating about the body horrors and the gross-out, splattery, content. This movie delivers. You get people puking up blood on each other, a penis ejaculating pus, a premature birthing, Marc Senter wailing on some guys head with a fire extinguisher, teeth and nails spontaneously falling out, and even a scene where a disgruntled school janitor pisses blood into a bowl of punch for the prom snack table! Delightful! And to balance off all the gross-out scenes, you get two delicious guys to stare at (Marc Senter and Noah Segan).

As mentioned previously, Ti West was the Eli Roth replacement in this film. Dare I say, he actually does a better job than Eli Roth. After seeing his debut film, â??The House of the Devilâ?? and now, â??Cabin Fever 2: Spring Feverâ?? (a lowly DTV sequel), I can definitely see this guy is one talented maniac who can comfortably work with, and creatively shape, whatever material lands on his plate. Unfortunately, Ti West didnâ??t really feel the same way about â??Cabin Fever 2: Spring Feverâ?? as I do and has basically disowned the film, alleging that the producers took over his directorial rights. Whether or not that is true is not for me to decide, but judging by the mild disruptions present in the film (and the lack of a coherent ending) there is evidence enough to suggest that there was a lot more of Ti Westâ??s influence that was cut out of the film, and thatâ??s just plain sad. On a positive note, the film is still incredibly solid despite it all and I definitely think itâ??s worth a look, or two, or three. In fact, this is one of the few films where I may actually enjoy watching the sequel for the third or fourth time before I re-watch the original.