What Goes Best With a Tux? Flesh Eating Bacteria, That’s What!

Cabin Fever was one of the oddest theatrical releases of the early 21st century, an overexcited, occasionally refreshing and often annoying mix of over-the-top gore, crass comedy, ‘80s homage, and pancakes. Perhaps then it’s only fitting that its sequel comes with a bucket of offscreen controversy and onscreen sloppiness.

In case you didn’t have your hopefully still attached ear to the horror news networks these past few months, Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever was directed (near completely) by House of the Devil  golden boy Ti West, who pleaded fruitlessly to have his name removed from the credits. Word on the virtual street is that West disagreed with producers over the final cut during the post-production process, eventually stepping away from the project and letting the Powers That Be Lionsgate finish the film as they saw fit.

It shows.

Quick Plot: Top-billed Rider Strong reprises his quickly rotting role as he flees the titular cabin and gets splattered by an early morning school bus. Familiar local cop Winston (Guiseppe Andrews) misdiagnoses the gunk as moose and an animated credits reel reveal the town water soon to be bottled is infected by that same flesh-eating virus that tore through many pretty people in Eli Roth’s original.

We quickly move on to typical high school politics, where smart senior John (Deadgirl ’s jerk Noah Segan, still traveling via bicycle) pines for pretty, popular, and recently-broken-up-from-her-samurai-wannabe-psycho-boyfriend Cassie while chubby pal Alex smoothly enjoys a quickie--real quickie--from a randomly easy classmate. A frog dissection and near suspension later, it’s prom night (cue the song! seriously) and the high school’s a’hoppin’ with a disco beat.

If you’ve heard anything about Cabin Fever 2, it’s probably that this is not the film to watch while eating nachos. See, there’s a lot of blood, and guts, and viral warts on private parts, and bloodier semen than Wilhem Dafoe’s Antichrist  climax. That being said, it’s also really not that...well...disturbing.

Or particularly good.

As the school dance kicks in, Cabin Fever 2 kicks into gear with a gymnasium-full viral spread that starts with a poisoned water, infected urine-spiced punch bowl. An awkward sex scene between the prom king and token obese outcast in a pool seems only to hint at something interesting, while the dance floor erupts into a lightning fast bloodbath before the prom queen can give what was sure to be an Obama-esque speech. In almost no time (the movie is under 80 minutes, after all), we’re left with John, Cassie, Alex, and a few unexplained gun-toting officials trying to survive amid lots of gooey grossness.

Oh! And of those 80 minutes, about 28 or so are randomly assigned to Winston’s Adventures as the enigmatic, if also annoying and baffling cop hangs out with Judah Frielander and hits the road in his cousin’s van. While I enjoy the pure weirdness of Andrews’ oddball character, nothing in this storyline (if you can really call it that) ever feels in line with the rest of the film, making the many diversions to his aimless lollygagging an incredibly wasted amount of screen time with no real payoff.

On one side, we have a humorous, but also occasionally heartfelt teenage gorefest built on occasional suspense and realistically drawn characters. On the other, a simply bizarre and directionless tale of a dimwit. I kind of enjoyed the persistence Cabin Fever 2 had in NOT being your typical by the numbers sequel, but it was, much like its basis, all over the place, further scattered by a tacked-on, far too long 10 minute epilogue following a high school stripper.

I can’t really say where Ti West’s involvement ended, but the lack of a strong directorial touch in the editing finish is uncomfortably felt in the latter half of Cabin Fever 2. Honestly, I don’t know that this would be anywhere near a classic had he stayed on board throughout, but the messiness of plotting--much like the original--makes the viewing experience simply strange.

A recent article in Shock Till You Drop offered one tidbit by producer Lauren Moews explaining how fitting it was that Cabin Fever 2 was edited by the same woman responsible for several John Waters’ films, and there are indeed some similarities. West gives us plenty of gratuitously ick-heavy moments that dare the audience to look away, like a prematurely ended-by-puke lap dance or intensely detailed fingernail peel (the only one that got me wincing). There are plenty of refreshing little quirks that keep the film fun and it’s hard to argue with any movie that recycles the only great thing about Prom Night (namely, Jamie Lee Curtis’ disco tune). At the same time, it’s impossible to care about anything when the film seems so insistent on not taking itself seriously.

High Points

There’s some nifty practical effects at work, like an early diner scene featuring a blood-squirting voicebox

West tows a careful line with his high school characters, using honored archetypes but imbuing them with interesting enough spins, like the ex-boyfriend’s Japanophile quirks and John’s surprisingly refreshing honesty with his dreamgirl (not deadgirl)

Low Points

An overly headache inducing fire extinguisher attack would be impressive if we hadn’t seen it before in The Signal or Irreversible

We don’t need--or really want--a huge backstory in fluffy romp like this, but the fact that the army or FDA or FBI or whoever the men with guns and gas cans are never explained is one more missing piece in a film not fully put together

A few moments of tension are broken when you realize how ridiculous they play out. Would the soldiers--or whoever it is patrolling the school, see previous Low Point--really not hear the kids escape an empty classroom 4 seconds after exiting themselves?

Lessons Learned

William Katt’s Carrie tuxedo never goes out of style

Bitches value spite and money

If getting a touch of infected blood on your skin will infect you, then running said hand through a buzzsaw and watching the blood squirt all over your face will surely be the cure

Rent/Bury/Buy

Cabin Fever 2 is a manic viewing experience, but not completely devoid of charm. Fans of the original will probably get a kick out of it, as it shares much of the crass humor, all-out gore, and smarter-than-your-average teen sensibilities. If I believed in officially rating films, this one would fall in the negative side. I can't say I liked it (mostly because I didn't like it) but it's not a complete waste of 80 minutes, especially if you're simply too curious to let it pass you by.

Are We Dead Yet?

In a few days, I’ll be hopping in a car and driving down south with a few friends for a mobile summer vacation. I know what you’re thinking: how could someone so well-versed in horror films possibly risk such a journey unless she’s itching to be chased, violated, and eaten by prehistoric cave people or rabidly maladjusted children. Thankfully, it’s because of those countless hours spent in front of straight-to-VHS rentals that I’m confident I have what it takes to survive. To be sure, I’ve compiled a few key points to remember when traveling through unchartered (at least by urbanite) terrain in an automobile.

1. Focus on the road

I have an odd, yet justified hatred of any film--particularly horror--that spends too much time in the front seat of a moving vehicle. More often than not, such a scene will feature the driver irresponsibly turning his or her head towards the passenger to carry out a conversation only to then cut to the shocked partner screaming “Watch out!” as the car veers off the road to avoid hitting a stray animal, child, or ghostly presence. (See The Descent, Children of the Corn, and about a thousand other films featuring more than one character on a highway.) A variation on this lesson can be seen in one of the most popular recent entries in the road trip gone awry genre, Wrong Turn. Leave it to seemingly intelligent med student Desmond Harrington to make the fatal error of shifting his focus from the windshield to the radio. The result? A broken leg, busted Mustang, and deadly chase with cannibalistic inbred West Virginian mutants. Take heed, young viewers: as humans, most of us only have two eyes. Glue ‘em to the windshield and let no spatula pry them off.

2. No skinny dipping

Partially because most natural waters are littered with some very unnatural waste. Also, if my 9th grade biology teacher was telling the truth, August is the time for clams and other sea creatures to deposit their sperm in aquatic environments for the reproduction season. Personally, I’m not quite at the right time in my life to cross into Cronenbergian body territory as the woman impregnated by a mollusk. (I get the feeling such a process is far less fun than it sounds.) The most important reason to stay clothed in the water, however, is that skinny dipping is, by all rules of the horror canon, a sin punishable by death. Take the nice young ladies of Tourist Trap, none of whom partake in any visible sexual activity, all of whom experienced terrifying abuse at the waxy hands of a backwoods artist who got a fleeting glance of their young bodies when they made the fatal error of diving bare into a private lake. Sometimes, that's all it takes to then be strangled, stabbed, and molded into a loose-jawed mannequin.

3. No hitchhikers

What, you mean I shouldn’t pull over and open my car door to that dusty bearded hobo with suspiciously red fluid leaking from his sack? But what of my karma, you ask, with good samaritan glitter in your wide eyes. Keep a running tab and call Sally Struthers when you get a fews bars on your cell phone. Picking up hitchhikers is the surest ticket to a bloody chase at the wrong end of a chainsaw or pesky stalking courtesy of one of the truest psychopaths cinema has ever given us in the pristinely blond body of Rutger Hauer. Remember Leatherface’s skinny big brother? Or how about the gutty mess those unlucky pretty young people never got the chance to clean up in the 2003 remake? Not to mention the finger fries and torso tearing of The Hitcher . Sure, that obnoxious Franklin deserved a little stabbage, but then you (and by default, us) had to deal with his whinings all night. And yes, driving solo cross country can be a lonely, but that’s what obnoxious radio commercials and unfunny DJs were made for. Just remember to see Rule #1 and tuned into one station until the next red light. 

4. No sassing the locals

Sure, rural townsfolk are different, what with their soder pop and mustard on hamburgers (in New York, that offense will send you straight to Ryker’s Island Maximum Security Prison). Always remember, however, that those same bumpkins whose blackened teeth gave you a chuckle can lead you straight into disaster, such as the wrong end of a black market organ donation ring a la Turistas. Eli Roth’s comedic horror homage Cabin Fever is ripe with lessons on how to behave south of the Mason Dixon Line. A few I picked up:

a) Never force a friendship on shy children. Some are socially awkward, but more importantly, some are well-versed in kung fu

b) No thieving the mom-and-pop shops. Particularly when pop wields a shotgun.

c) Avoid peeping on married women. This is an especially bad idea when your friends are dying, you’ve blown up your car, and you may be infected with a flesh eating bacteria like silly little Ryder Strong, who loses his last chance of getting some help when he lingers a tad too long at a local’s window. 

5. No taking advice about off-the-beaten track attractions from locals

It’s not on a map. GPS has nothing to say about it. But that scabby clown dripping in fried chicken grease swears it’s the greatest place since Dollywood. That’s right folks, do not, I repeat, do NOT take traveling directions from suspicious locals, particularly when they survived Spider Baby to grow into older, rounder, and more vicious backwoods peddlers of local town lore like Sid Haig's Captain Spaulding in Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses. This is a man who, along with his not-quite-fit-for-society family, is so evil he'd actually lure Rainn Wilson into death. You have to be pretty badass to take down Dwight Schrute, and/or really heartless to want Rainn Wilson exterminated. So. If you hit a rest stop littered with mutated skeletons and busting with whispers of a true roadside attraction detailing the life of one of the country's most brutal serial killers...

Oh who am I kidding. There’s no way in hell would I NOT take that advice. The only real question is at whose hands do I ultimately perish. Considering my lifelong complications with Barnum & Bailey's most ubiquitous entertainers, my corpse will probably be shipped home stained with white pancake makeup. But hopefully, I’ll experience enough adventure in those fleeting moments before my untimely death to crank out a few more blogs from beyond the grave.