Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever

The Auteur Theory Can Suck It

by Marc Calderaro

Last weekend I watched the new Ti West film,

Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever, twice.  Mostly

because the movie’s is pretty ridiculous, and also

because it took me by surprise. It’s not surprising

that a West sequel would be balls-crazy and

tonally unique, but because very few people cared

that it was coming out at all.  Gore fans and horror

nerds should’ve been salivating at the chance to see

the mind behind House of the Devil, hand-selected

by Eli Roth, head-up a ludicrously campy sequel to

one of the coolest throwbacks in a while.  And

Lionsgate could’ve whet our appetites with some

slick-ass marketing and what not.  But sadly,

neither of these happened.  In fact, the only press

leading up to the straight-to-DVD release was Ti

West thrashing it mercilessly.  Talking about how the

film was wrestled from him in post-production, West

has gone on the record telling of how he tried to get his name taken off the project, and whether

the film is good or bad (he hadn’t seen it), it’s not because of him.  (Though he applied for

the “Alan Smithee” credit, because West’s not part of the Directors’ Guild Association,

DGA, the studio had to approve his decision.  That wasn’t going to happen.)  So instead

of an aggressively marketed campaign to play up “from the director of House of the Devil,”

Lionsgate quietly pushed the movie to shelves with the coveted “Unrated” prominently on the

box, in the hopes that browsing casual horror fans will recognize the franchise name and give it

a shot.  A sad fate for any sequel, especially one with such promise.

But, like I said before, I watched the film twice – and I think you should too.  Not only does

Cabin Fever 2 include some great staples of 80s horror filmmaking (an era West clearly

admires); absurd, satirical, fake-high-school relationships and interactions (the super-aggro

ex-boyfriend and the sleazy Prom King are nearly perfect); and some world-class low-budget

gore (I’m not spoiling anything specific, only that the film goes just about every place you don’t

want it to) – but the film is also an incredible study of the clash between director and studio,

a topic well worth studying.

The importance of director/studio clashing is documented in a variety of places but most famously by Criterion’s release of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.  When the lauded DVD distributor released the film, it would’ve been very easy to simply include only Gilliam’s version and talk about how inept the studio was to butcher such a masterwork.  Instead, Criterion also included the studio’s “Love Conquers All” version and a production notebook DVD for comparing the two.  “Love Conquers All” is just as important a piece of art as Gilliam’s Brazil.  It articulates perfectly the difference between an artist’s and a corporation’s vision.  And in that light, the studio’s cut is nothing short of profound.  Because the film medium is so expensive, whether the artist likes it or not, the money will always have a say.  If people (usually the director) don’t play nice enough, the production company can make whatever film they choose to.  Luckily for the artists, however, many famous attempts to commodify the not-easily-commodified are abject studio failures – I don’t think it’s a secret that Brazil didn’t do too well in the box office.  And both Dune and Alien 3, other well-publicized creative clashes, were considered large-scale flops.

But even if you don’t care at all about Ti West, nor Lionsgate, nor film culture, the editing of Spring Fever reveals an internal struggle between the images, tone and pacing so clear it’s captivating.  The West’s extreme camp just doesn’t mesh at all with the purposefully awkward, post-Napoleon Dynamite feel tacked on every now and then.  Somehow, projectile blood-vomiting onto a disco ball just doesn’t sit right with Savage-Steve-Holland-era cartoon sequences.  And in a slapdash turn, a sub-plot clearly intended to be intercut with the main action of the film is instead added as a out-of-place coda that makes little to no sense.  I felt like I was watching a schlock distributor’s re-cut of an overseas exploitation film – or the American version of The Leopard.  The only purposes the coda serves are to give a better entry point for a final cartoon sequence and to push the film closer to the desired 90-minute-mark (I can’t help but think of Arno Frisch’s in Funny Games, “We’re not up to feature length yet”).  Many of these post-production choices are so odd and irresolvable with the images, at times I felt like the project must have been taken over by an alien – one who studied earth-human film for a long time, but still can’t get the feeling quite right. There are seemingly infinite spots where you can peel the celluloid apart and peek into the divisiveness between what West wanted and what other, more influential people wanted.

Sure the narrative probably doesn’t function as well as it would have if the director had stayed through the editing process, but even that still holds up to a degree.  Oddly enough, the story comes off much like a Lucio Fulci film – great gore, awkward character interactions and questionable editing.  Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever won’t be remembered as neither the greatest nor the worst.  Instead, for remaining in an almost-perfect limbo between artistic credibility and fiscal responsibility.  The film is a martyr.  It reminds us of the importance of artistic cooperation and just how fragile our auteur theory is.  Sure the director can shine through the cracks, but the production company ultimately has control over what vision is properly shown.  The director usually holds the high hand of creativity, but sometimes the money can just throw a trump card.