Now that’s more like it! Until now, the conformist in me had been disturbed by January releases. Films like Plane and Missing, while far from perfect, actually told stories and characters to follow and wrote scripts that didn’t make me want to head for the exit within two minutes of Nicole Kidman telling me why I showed up in the first place. But then, along came Fear, a “horror” film without horror … or anything else for that matter. An empty vessel of a film in which I couldn’t wait to start killing characters off, but the damn picture still waited over an hour to present the first body. Fear is a film with no POV, no distinct villain, and no coherent story.
Bless you, January. it took longer than usual, but this is exactly what I expect of you.
I guess there were some main characters here, but it was so hard to tell as I didn’t care about anything this film had to offer. Hmmm, let me put it this way: the most time on screen went to Rom (Joseph Sikora, who, I’m sorry, but did he have to look like a Nazi for this film?) and his girlfriend Bianca (Annie Ilonzeh). For her birthday, Rom takes her to an abandoned B&B in the mountains. Think of the setting of The Shining, only seven shades stupider.
At the “hotel,” for lack of a better word, there isn’t any staff, but all their “friends” showed up. I’m pretty these people exist in the film only to highlight how much better our leads are, but it doesn’t work because everyone in the film sucks. Some old bat of a “caretaker” leaves the gang with a crappy bottle of wine and then essentially says, “have at the place” which is a weird way to run your B&B.
This is the part where creepy stuff is suppose to happen fomenting to a crescendo of eerie, but if anything
even remotely unnerving happened in the first hour, I clearly missed it. Is there a demon running this hotel? Can I get a little service, huh, movie?
Somewhere around the 1:10 mark, the film remembered it was horror and maybe people should start dying or something, but it is entirely unclear who was going to die and why. This, as I say, is a shame because I hated all the characters and the film couldn’t kill them off fast enough for my tastes.
I would love to know the person who actually feared Fear. For a generic, uninteresting. and, frankly, pathetic title, Fear didn’t live up to its titular premise in any form. I’d say this film gets zero stars, but you actually have to have a misused perspective to merit a zero. Fear has no perspective. It hasn’t really got anything. It would be like giving zero stars to the sidewalk in front of my house.
There once was an evil B&B
That attracted some of Generation Z
But these kids on vacay
Didn’t die right away
And I took off to check out theater three
Rated R, 98 Minutes
Director: Deon Taylor
Writer: John Ferry, Deon Taylor
Genre: Not sure; I think you have to have a genuine plot to be able to assess a genre
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Actors who think this is their “big break”
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: The general populace
