Review: In Fear

In 2013’s cinematic landscape of CGI, digital technology and lavish blockbusters, audiences can thirst for a film stripped down to the bare essentials. In Fear is one such film, about little more than two spritely young urbanites getting lost in the countryside. Tom (Iain De Caestecker) and Lucy (Alice Englert) are looking for a remote hotel and – yes, you guessed it – there is something unsavoury in the woods. Instead of finding the Killarney Arms, they find a terrible start to the holiday.

For a while, this minimalistic style works. A simple, everyday setting can enhance a horror film because it makes it ‘real’ for the audience. It is this which allows In Fear to be scary: two people inside the car; something menacing outside. As Tom and Lucy drive hopelessly lost for hours, things go from bad to worse, their increasing stress levels mirroring the nervy audience’s. The acting is good and believable, especially considering that the set is essentially a car and the actors have to be frightened of something that they know is not there. However, that is really all that I can say in the film’s favour.

When the satnav eerily blinked ‘signal lost’, I wondered if this was going to be tongue-in-cheek – An American Werewolf in London style comic-horror. Actually, In Fear is simply unaware of how riddled it is with laughable clichés: an unwelcoming pub of cantankerous, three-eyed locals who enjoy nothing more than turning music off when strangers enter; a decrepit roadside shack with broken tractors in the garden and a ‘KEEP OUT’ sign on the rotten gate; shaking cameras filming the car from behind a bush, the operator atmospherically pushing the lens into the nearest leaf every few seconds. Most of the dialogue is ‘that’s funny, I could have sworn...’ and ‘it’s probably nothing [so let’s face away from the impending danger]’. Some viewers chuckled, others walked out.

Without wanting to reveal too much – although it would be a struggle to do so – the most flawed aspect of In Fear is its total lack of story. Whereas Halloween, Psycho or Friday the 13^th explain their killers and introduce a spooky legend, the writer(s) of In Fear apparently just didn’t bother. This means that all of the fright dissipates on exiting the cinema. The Alan Partridge-style pitch for this movie must have been over in seconds. Much of it doesn’t actually make sense – many of the spooky happenings are literal physical impossibilities. Fundamentally, this is an insult to the audience, who are paying increasingly expensive ticket prices. Additionally, I just didn’t care. There is no biographical information about the characters (I couldn’t even work out her accent), so they remain cardboard cut-outs, dispensable youths to be sacrificed on the altar of horror. Where is the terror in that?

In Fear does what it says on the tin. It is a horror film, designed primarily to scare, and there are plenty of frights: suspense, ghostly figures and people jumping out suddenly. If this is what you’re after, then In Fear is perfect. Just don’t expect anything else.