Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (2009) Review

"Water coming out of here is bad news."
-Deputy Winston Olsen



The infection from the first Cabin Fever has spread and the government arrives to contain the problem and kill anyone who may have been contaminated.  They track the outbreak to a high school that is in the middle of their Prom.  Trapped inside, a group of students have to find a way out of the school before they get infected or killed by the government agents.


What Works:

You know what, this movie starts off strong.  It starts with the return of Paul (Rider Strong) from the previous movie.  While Paul was a pile of crap character, I like Rider Strong and it was fun to have him back in such a tiny role.  He has no dialogue and has his face disfigured from the disease.  He is also immediately killed when he is run over by a bus.  Plus, this movie was released seven years after the original.  There was no reason Rider Strong needed to be in this movie.  They could have easily replaced him with anybody.  But they brought him back and gave us a memorable kill to start the movie and I appreciate that.

Just after the opening sequence and at the very end of the movie, we got animated sequences showing how the infection has spread.  I'm sure this was done for budgetary reasons, but it was pretty creative and one of the only interesting parts of the film.

The gore is solid all around.  There are a lot of really gross moments and sick death scenes.  The infections are gnarly and parts of the movie are hard to watch, but that's what I was expecting to get out of this film and it did not disappoint in that aspect.

Finally. although our lead character, John, sucks for the most part because he is a bit of a whiny, nice-guy, actor John Segan does a good job with the role.  There are a few scenes where he gets angry, sometimes justifiably, sometimes not so much, but he is solid in those scenes.  I can really feel his anger coming across and it was at least something interesting to watch.


What Sucks:

The characters in the first movie were all pretty terrible people, but at least they were somewhat interesting to watch.  The characters in Spring Fever are mostly boring.  A lot of the film focus on high school drama which I could not give less of a crap about.  The first half of the movie is almost entirely devoid of gore and horror elements.  It's just stupid teenagers dealing with their stupid problems.  It's not even remotely interesting.

We also have the return of the worst character from the first movie, which was full of terrible characters, Deputy Winston Olsen (Giuseppe Andrews).  I couldn't stand this guy before and he's still terrible.  The secondary story of the film is entirely about him figuring out what is happening in his town and fleeing for his life.  This guy sucks and we don't even get to watch him die.

There are a lot of weird moments when the characters at prom realize something is wrong.  It seems like there are some shots that are shown out of order.  Like the students fleeing the dance floor, but they can't get out for some reason, even though the lead characters were able to get out with no problem a scene earlier.  Then later we see the janitor knocking over some decorations and blocking the door.  There are a few other moments like this that just don't make any sense and I got the feeling the editor didn't really care about this film.  It makes sense when you learn the director of this film completely disowned it.


Verdict:

Cabin Fever 2 is slightly worse than the original.  It has boring characters, an uninteresting story, and parts that just don't make sense.  I liked the gore, the animated sequences, the return of Rider Strong, and John Segan's decent acting, but for this movie is a complete mess and not in a fun way.

 3/10: Really Bad 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Argylle (2024) Review

Top 10 Movies of 2023

Madame Web (2024) Review