Fever all through the night

Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever(2009)

Cabin Fever 2 is not so much a film that was released, as escaped, and you could say that the escape was only partially successful as it was on one screen for only one show in Austin, TX, two years after it was made. I went to this screening that the director himself had boycotted after having his film taken away and re-cut, expecting a train wreck. Instead, I got an unloved mongrel of a film, as much slapstick comedy as gory horror. It’s not remotely scary but must be admired for how determinedly it tests the audiences’ gag reflex. The gore effects are good, but unlike the original, we don’t really get the time to see them fester before people die, apart from the bus/genitals/ swimming pool highlights. I actually preferred it to Eli Roth’s original, because whereas the original left me feeling cheated by its moments of absurdity, this pinned out its comedy credentials from the onset, as much Porky’s(1982) as Bodymelt(1993). In fact, that’s wrong, there’s also a strong dash of John Hughes, and the real shame about CF2, is that when it’s good, in the teenage anxiety of the first half, it promises to be a much better film than it turns out to be. We could also have done without(unless perhaps in a cameo at the start or in a gruesome death), the return of Sheriff Winston from the first film. Annoyingly, it seems at one stage as though he’s going to grow from comic relief into hero, ala Ash in The Evil Dead trilogy, or Malcolm in Jurassic Park(1993), only for this to be thrown away in favor of tension sapping comedy scenes, to cut away to, every time the Crazies(1973) like ending shows signs of getting suspenseful. CF2 then feels strangely unfinished but also overburdened with unnecessary subplots, but it definitely deserves a dvd rental, and sadly is still more fun than most of the horror movies that get released. And although a 28 Weeks Later(2007) third part seems offered at the end, we’re probably not that interested to warrant one. 5/10