DVD REVIEW: CABIN FEVER 2 – SPRING FEVER

 

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AMAZON: CLICK
HERE! 
STUDIO: Lions
Gate
MSRP:
$26.98
RATED: Not
Rated
RUNNING TIME: 87
minutes
SPECIAL
FEATURES:

• “The Making of Gore” featurette
• Prom Blows Gore Reel

The Pitch

It’s a funny sequel to an Eli Roth torture porn

The Humans

Director: Ti West

Writer: Joshua Malkin

Cinematographer: Eliot Rockett

Music Composed By: Ryan Shore

Cast: Rider Strong, Noah Segan, Alexander Isaiah
Thomas, Giuseppe Andrews, Alexi Wasser, Regan Deal, Rusty Kelley, Marc Senter,
Michael Bowen

The Nutshell

One survivor from Cabin Fever survived and spread
the disease to a local high school, just in time for prom.

The Lowdown

Do any of you remember how Joe Lynch took over the Wrong
Turn franchise for the second installment and created something
that blew the original out of the water? The serious horror was pushed aside a
bit for a more fun atmosphere that feels right at home in a film with this much
over-the-top gore. A lot of people hate Cabin Fever
but thanks to the direction Ti West takes, similar to the style Lynch shoots in,
the movie hooked me from the start.

Paul (from the first film) drags himself out of the lake, half his face
bloated from the disease and tries to make his way to safety. He finally reaches
a road and luckily there is a school bus coming down the road. Well, it would
have been lucky if the bus hadn’t of plowed right into him, his body exploding
on impact. We then get a hilarious animated opening sequence that shows how the
disease was transferred. It is a great beginning to a movie that provides miles
more entertainment than Eli Roth’s original vision.

Part of the movie is a ridiculous high school horror movie. The kids in the
movie are hit and miss, more miss than hit. There are nerds, jocks, fat chicks,
hard assed principals and even shittier teachers. However, there are also girls
with braces who give blow jobs in the bathroom to a guy who accepts the pain
just to get the pleasure. The hard assed principal is also gay, with a large
biker boyfriend. And the clueless deputy from the first movie is back and this
time he realizes something strange might be going on!

Then there is what we all came for. After the glorious opening, we get a
disgusting scene where a guy starts spraying blood from his tracheotomy tube.
Then there is the prom, a sequence with more blood and guts than any prom I have
seen since Carrie, all with a knowing wink
towards Prom Night as well. Of course, it is also
interesting to note that the reason the kids at the prom are infected is because
of a janitor and some bodily fluids added to the punch. This movie pulls no
punches – hell, there is disgusting sex in a pool with a naked fat chick – and
everything is done with the tongue firmly planted in the proverbial cheek.

I’d also like to point out the cameos in the movie, falling in line with the
entire offhanded style West was aiming for. Judah Friedlander plats a hapless
Down Home Spring Water Employee and Mark Borchardt (American
Movie) also appears as Deputy Winston’s cousin Herman. Between
those two actors and Guiseppe Andrews as Winston, it’s like redneck central.
Between the casting and excellent directing by Ti West, there was no way this
movie could fail. Yet it did.

West is a man of many faces. He made a brilliant straight horror movie in
House of the Devil and was also partially responsible
for this equally brilliant comic horror movie. The man is a huge talent and has
a bright future ahead of him. Unfortunately, he walked out on this project early
and it shows. The movie has sat on the shelf for a few years now and they
finished the editing (and some shooting) without their director. The final
scenes of the movie are haphazard and sloppy. When a group of mercenaries show
up at the school and hunt down the infected, while our heroes try to remain
safe, it goes from a fun, gross out splatstick to a generic horror movie.

I feel bad for West, who wanted to Alan Smithee the film but wasn’t allowed.
The movie had so much promise and could have easily been another
Wrong Turn 2 but at the end of the day it was a great
movie that became a cheap version of The Crazies by
the end. Don’t even get me started on the tacked on, unfunny strip club scene at
the end.

The Package

Gore Reel is a like a gag reel but it is all about – you guessed it, the
gore. It is three minutes long.  The behind the scenes featurette clocks in at
12:47 and doesn’t feature Ti West at all (surprise, surprise). Hell, no one even
mentions him or the problems during the shoot. That makes the entire feature a
failure to me.

6.5 out
of 10