Review for In Fear

What do you get when you try and mix the atmosphere of The Blair Witch Project, Duel, Strawdogs and Deliverance? You get a film that is so dripping with cliches that it is almost unwatchable. In Fear does for the Irish Tourist Board what Wolf Creek did for Australian Backpacking.

Tom and Lucy are on their way to a music festival when Tom decides to 'treat' Lucy to a night in a hotel. This being only the second week of their relationship you can understand why Lucy is a little bit hesitant. Soon they are following a mysterious vehicle on the way to their hotel when it abandons them and they are stuck going around in circles. Before you know it, they are being frightened by mysterious figures lurking in the woods, items are being taken from the vehicle and they are generally having the bejesus scared out of them while they both try to survive the night, but if they do, what will be left of them?

At first, this doesn't seem like a bad premise of a film. I hate driving at night and the idea of getting lost in the woods is a primal fear that we all have. But what this film fails to do is a.) Give us something to realy fear and b.) Give us characters to actually care about. The whole reason why something like Blair Witch works is because we genuinely care for the characters and want them to survive. Tom and Lucy? After the first half hour I was just praying for their deaths to come quick.

The problem I have here is that I can't really go into the bad parts without spoiling some genuinely frightening moments and some plot points that people might enjoy. That being said, this is a film that spends so long setting up the scenario and then no time at all on the payoff. Both characters are messing about, being stupid and in some ways this would have been better if they hadn't established the whole 'second week of a relationship' dynamic. The two characters were treating each other like you would if they had known each other for years and the constant making fun of Lucy by Tom was something that you wouldn't see in that new of a relationship? Because of that, what happens to the two seems out of place and the mix of 'Is it supernatural?' and 'Is it just Irish version of Rednecks messing about with them?' is lost somewhat.

Without spoiling the film, I will say that it is just cliched and pointless. The characters are one dimensional and the brilliant premise is ruined by the utter stupidity of the characters. I swear if you played a shots game counting the number of times the two did not lock their door you would probably have liver failure. Yes, it's that kind of film. When you do finally find out what's going on it's never explained and so pointless that you wonder what the whole point of the film was in the first place?

The film is dripping with extras and that makes me even more mad. The Making of documentary is almost as long as the film and really only goes into how difficult it was to make the film. Thankfully, most of the creation stories are told in the commentary, but of course that does mean sitting through the awful film again. Granted, at least they seemed to explain what was going on a bit better, shame none of it translated to the screen though. A Stills gallery is just that a bunch of still shots of behind the scenes filming. There is a bizarre twenty minute feature with Roly Porter's music from the film. Now this would be great, as the music is one of the few highlights of the film, however it is just twenty minutes of music over the main menu and maybe they should have incorporated this with the stills gallery. Finally, we have the trailer which I will say do not watch if you don't want every scare spoilt for you.

In Fear could have been a good film. It has a great premise, a great cast, a great score and for the most part some great camerawork. However, it soon becomes just a bunch of cliches seen in much better films that in this film come across as lame. Many people are calling the film 'chilling' and 'frightening', but the only thing frightening about the film is how anyone would want to watch it.