Guilty Pleasures: Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever
Eli Roth is an asshole. No, not because he blew smoke in Gilmore’s face a few Comic Cons ago. If you’ve met Gilmore, you’d also want to blow smoke in his face. No, Eli Roth is an asshole because for a split second he gave me hope in horror and then became the leader of what was wrong with it.
In 6th grade I became a big horror movie buff. By my freshmen year of high school I had lost all respect for horror. The new films coming out refused to be scary or fun. They were boring films that took themselves entirely too seriously movies like Jeepers Creepers and Valentine. Then I saw Cabin Fever. It was everything I’d been missing in the post Scream days: just good clean stupid fun. I thought “truly, this director Eli Roth will bring horror back into its gory, humorous and scary roots.” Ultimately this didn’t happen. Instead, he made the Hostel sequels and became Quentin Tarantino’s favorite pet project. Thankfully, people like Adam Greene and James Gunn have since stood up and proved that there are still directors out there making good fun horror movies.
When I saw the direct-to-DVD release of Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever in my local Best Buy I was immediately apprehensive about it. Then I saw a good sign. Eli Roth had nothing to do with it, no producer credit, writer credit or director credit. Instead it was written and directed by Ti West, a man who’s career has been on the rise since directing The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers. Ti West has disowned this movie, which I think is a little harsh. The movie is far better than he seems to want to give it credit for.
The movie picks up where the original Cabin Fever left off. Our ‘hero’ Paul is disfigured and dying. He crawls out of the creek where we last saw him and wanders out into the middle of street where he’s hit by a school bus. These first 3 minutes of film already set up that you are in for a gore-filled laugh-fest.
Through a fun animated sequence, we see how the creek Paul was lying in was connected to a bottled-water company and the water bottles with Paul’s virus are being distributed to the local high school.
The Senior Prom is coming up and John wants to go with his long time crush Cassie or not at all. Meanwhile his best friend Alex has a random hook-up with Liz who promises that she might show up to the prom if she can get off work.
The prom begins and everything you’d want in a horror movie is present: sex, blood and hilarious one-liners. The movie could have easily failed but it doesn’t for multiple reasons. For starters the cast is great. The actress who plays Cassie is quite adorable. She reminds me of a Riki Lindhome/Felicia Day type. Meanwhile, the actors playing our leads Alex and John are charming and believable.
My favorite aspect of the movie is its depictions of sex. Unlike most horror movies, the sex is never played for sexiness for a single second. Between Liz giving Alex a very awkward blowjob and then spitting his semen into the sink or two characters having sex in a pool before dying of the infection, it’s never even slightly sexy.
The movie currently has no Rotten Tomatoes critical score but the user score is a pathetic 16%. That’s just unfair. I mean, Hostel: Part 2 has a 45% user rating and it doesn’t nearly have the likeable characters, good one-liners and general sense of fun that Cabin Fever 2 has.
Despite what critics and Ti West say Cabin Fever 2: Spring Break is a good way to waste 86 minutes.
Tell us some of your favorite guilty pleasures in the Guilty Pleasures Thread!
When he’s not watching movies that almost everyone involved in the making of has all but abandoned you can find Matt Kelly tweeting, hosting his podcast The Saint Mort Show and posting in his blog Pure Mattitude
