This very abrupt escalation in their friendship is precisely why a lot of Cabin Fever’s critics pan this scene. The situation has escalated so swiftly that even the lovers themselves seem to be bewildered by what’s happening. The very next thing we see is Marcy and Paul - both stark naked - tumbling onto the bed together, already joined in the act of sex. Everyone around you is screaming, yelling, ‘We’re going down! We’re going down!’ And all you really want to do is grab the person next to you and fuck the shit out of them, ‘cause you know you’re gonna be dead soon, anyway.” “It’s like being on a plane when you know it’s gonna crash.
This is when Marcy delivers the notorious line that serves as the prelude to their sex scene, He does his best to reassure her - to no avail. Paul discovers Marcy staring numbly out a window, her will seemingly broken by the tragedy surrounding her, and the likelihood that she herself may fall prey to the deadly illness that has all but killed her friend. Marcy and Paul are now, in effect, all alone as the last two ‘healthy’ people left at the cabin. By which time, Karen is all but on her deathbed.
Bert and Jeff separately flee the cabin the following morning. In the hours that follow, the relationships between the five friends break down and turn sour. Then, to their horror, they discover that he has somehow passed his illness on to Karen! disaster! First of all, a vagrant with some horrible flesh-eating disease invades their peaceful vacation and immobilizes their car. So we are also conditioned to assume that Paul can’t end up with anyone except Karen. Likewise, the film establishes that Paul has been carrying a torch for Karen for years, and is only now beginning to pluck up the courage to make a move on her. A scene early in the film establishes that they have a very robust sex life so from the very beginning, we are conditioned to assume that she can’t end up with anyone else. Initially, Marcy is in a relationship with Jeff. In fact, I would say that out of all of Cabin Fever’s ‘shock twists’, Marcy’s affair with Paul is probably the most essential.įirst thing’s first you can’t appreciate the significance of their sex scene if you aren’t up to speed on the context it takes place within. In both the literal and figurative sense, Cabin Fever is all about what’s going on beneath the surface.įar from the ‘pointless detour’ it is often reputed to be, I believe that Paul and Marcy’s affair was a justified and clever development in the story line.
But as avid fans of Cabin Fever know, there is more going on in the film than what we see at first glance. The scene won’t make sense to anyone who can’t be bothered to look carefully for the sense behind it. The problem with these critiques is that they are all based upon the shallowest possible observations. Paul and Marcy had no romance, so why should they end up in bed together? After all, the scene had no obvious build-up. The affair is practically over as soon as it’s begun, and many reviewers have regarded it as a pointless detour in the narrative for the sake of some on-screen nudity. One such twist is the unexpected sexual affair that flares up between Paul and Marcy early in the film’s final act. But keener fans will point out how most of these so-called ‘cheap curve-balls’ have deeper ties to the rest of the story than you might notice at first glance. Critics of the film - and there are many - have been known to jeer these twists as senseless curve-balls that Eli Roth (the director & co-writer) threw in for cheap shock value. The five leads are highly relatable, but beyond them the film’s ensemble of eerily eccentric secondary characters weave together to create an environment that feels ‘sort of’ like the rational world we all live in - but not quite.Įven more jarring, however, are the numerous ninety-degree turns that the narrative abruptly takes. We start out with an established party of five friends, with its own established dynamics, and watch how these relationships change in the face of a life-or-death catastrophe.Īrguably, what set Cabin Fever apart from other horror films of its era was its off-beat and often surreal style of storytelling. But as with many films, the central premise is really just a framework around which to tell a story about relationships. You may or may not be familiar with Cabin Fever, a low-budget horror film that found unexpected success at the box office back in 2002 and has since come to be regarded as a cult classic.įor the uninitiated, Cabin Fever’s basic plot is about five college friends who go on vacation and find themselves trapped in the middle of a deadly viral outbreak.
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