I am a big fan of Eli Roth's Cabin Fever. Its a mediocre modern horror classic, a series of classic horror references, clichés, funny performances, gore, silliness, quirky moments... a little unbalanced, but balanced nonetheless. It is also, most importantly, a first feature, made with sweat and blood, family money, and all kinds of trials and tribulations that eventually paid off, as the movie was bought by Lion's Gate and went on to make 15 times it's small budget. Some people feel Cabin Fever is gratuitous, that it steps over the line...perhaps, but not as much as Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever.
This film is horrifying. Horrifying in that it was made, edited, boxed, all to be sold to an audience in connection with the first. I don't care that the director, Ti West, attempted to have his name removed from it after extensive re-editing and re-shooting by the producers, there is nothing to be proud of anywhere in this, I couldn't fathom any watchable footage, not from what can be deduced from this version. It gratuitously leaps well over the line in many scenes, for sheer shock value, while the plot is full of holes and incomprehensible behavior. It has no real link to the first film (this should be taken for granted) the acting and characters are ridiculous, and it is all done with no taste. Eli Roth's was coarse, vulgar, but was done with a love for old horror films. It was done with a bit of taste, and flair. This is lacking in all the above.
The flesh eating bacteria from the first film makes it's way into the bottled water used by a local high school, on the day of it's prom dance. Any rules established in the previous film about the nature of the bacteria, the way it is spread and the time it takes to develop, is completely disregarded in this sequel, in lieu of plot timing. In this film, people can be tap dancing one moment, projectile vomiting blood the next. The 25-year-old high schoolers in the film stumble through awkward, unnecessary scenes, desperately trying to grasp dialogue from 'SuperBad', and acting in a generally unbelievable way. The sub plot, using an already unlikeable character from the first film, goes nowhere and ends ambiguously. The film is also very brisk at 87 minutes, ending with a long animated sequence similar to that from the beginning.
More: Spoilers below: The climax of the film is tasteless in the extreme, unleashing an unbelievable shadowy government force of gun toting men on the school, who lock the doors up with chains and open fire on students randomly. Sound familiar? The actions by the students are so random and thrown together, the film seems almost like it was written by a couple of drunk guys at a table with paper and crayons. Sex with a fat girl in a pool that turns bloody! And how about bleeding, puss-oozing male genitalia? Thats sounds hilarious! Oh, and a botched pregnancy, a dumpster baby, to add a moment of real horror! A sudden, unexplained amputation, it goes on and on.
It's not fun, it's squirm inducing, with no build up and no pay off. The whole film, the concept, acting, editing, producing, directing, characters, the whole thing is just convulsing, rotting away yet thrashing around bleeding at the same time, like it was infected with a......
