In Fear (2013)

The Dead End Date!

To be honest, I wasn't at all surprised to find that after viewing Jeremy Lovering's "In Fear" that the hatred for it on internet sites was large. It's that type of film, a film existing in the horror field of things that can cause mass debate, disappointments for those after a jolting or gory shocker, and yet there's also pleasures that some have found in it. If you have seen it and hate it then there's no need to read on, I got nothing for you, this is purely a review by someone who loved it and hopes that anyone who hasn't seen it may just give it a chance.

A young couple very early in their courting relationship are driving across rural Ireland to a music festival. After a fraught stop at a local public house, they continue on the journey only to get lost. As night draws in and they appear to go around in circles, they start to get menaced by person or persons unknown and unseen...

As anyone who has been in the situation will attest, getting lost in an unfamiliar countryside is no fun, especially when the night falls. "In Fear" pitches two young characters (played superbly by Iain De Caestecker & Alice Englert who are reacting naturally) into one such scenario. This is a couple who are only two weeks into their relationship, they don't really know each other do they? So when things start to get tense and scary they are naturally ill at ease with each other's company, they have no idea how to react to what is happening to them - which is continuously ambiguous.

Two people in a car in the countryside shouldn't be scary, but it is because things get tense. Things start to happen to them, simple things that suggest an outside force is at work, all while the once pretty scenery has become a menacing backdrop, with the sound work prodding away at our fretful protagonists. Then a third party enters the fray and things get even more ambiguous, but such is the stripped down nature of the pic the nail-biting tension goes up another notch.

This is not new horror cinema, in fact it's a little contrived in places, but all the fears on show here are easy to relate to. Both as regards the scary situation and as an early date experience! It's stylishly filmed by Lovering and his cinematographer David Katznelson, with tight close-ups and nifty use of the dark spaces on the country roads turning the tension screws. All of which just leaves the ending, an ending which will either infuriate or baffle you, or conversely have you nodding in admiration at the bare faced cheek of it. 9/10

"Tom" (Iain De Caestecker) and his girlfriend "Lucy" (Alice Englert) are heading to a music festival in Ireland when they manage to get themselves lost. The quiet and dark country lanes begin to seem more menacing, they see strange things hanging from the trees (not the audience, quite yet) and then they almost kill "Max" (Allen Leech). The atmosphere inside their car, with their bleeding passenger antagonising merrily, gradually worsens until tempers flare and perhaps, - no kidding - "Max" isn't quite what he originally appeared to be. To be fair to auteur Jeremy Lovering, the photography does help create a slight sense of peril, but the story is so very derivative and the acting is college project stuff. I challenge anyone not to have guessed the dynamics of the plot after twenty minutes, and as the story lurches from one expletive-ridden, hysterical, scenario to the next, the whole film degenerates into a really rather poor attempt at an horror film which delivers characters about whom I couldn't have cared less travelling the lanes of Ireland - an island which this film must have increased in size tenfold - that I could not even appreciate for some fine daytime scenery. Yes, I'm sure I ought to cut it some slack. Poorly funded independent cinema and all that, but none of that really has to matter if the story is sound and the talent up to the task. Sadly, neither is true here.

The Forest at night look terrifying, and I thought they were just spooky in daylight.
Our actors are portraying their characters with great effectiveness, I'm having trouble not wishing them a terrifyingly horrible adventure. It just got scary, I nearly dropped my drink. We've another player on the board now, unsure of his status or his true intentions for now. If your still here, then you've got to freaking be losing your mind about now.

...Sadism at its ugly worst...