MPAA Rating: R
Director: Jeremy Lovering
FilmPulse Score: 5/10
If a man hurts an innocent person, the evil will fall back upon him and the fool will be destroyed.
This proclamation scrawled on a bathroom stall wall, read by stall occupant, Lucy (Alice Englert) while being spied on through a hole in the wall is how director Jeremy Lovering decides to start his debut feature film, In Fear. This qoute (along with Lucy’s sharpied answer underneath) sets a game afoot, an experiment “in fear” as Lovering puts it as the young couple are trapped within a dirt-road labyrinth, tormented by someone or something lurking in the dark.
Tom (Iain De Caestecker) and Lucy have stopped at a local pub on their way to meet a couple of friends, camping out in anticipation of attending a music festival. What Lucy doesn’t know is, is that Tom has decided to surprise her with a night at the Kilairney House Hotel to celebrate their two week anniversary. They just have to wait in the pub parking lot for someone from the hotel to swing by, whisking them off to a romantic night buried deep in the Irish countryside with its sad fields and grumpy stones.
Keep in mind this film is set in the present. It’s important to me…for you to understand that they are waiting for someone from the hotel to swing by and direct them to said hotel. That’s the kind of logical writing we are all working with here as Tom fails to see the giant red flag repeatedly slapping him in the face.
Nonsensical writing aside, Lovering does a remarkable of job of slowly, purposefully building the tension through the film’s isolated location. The claustrophobia of the
secluded backwoods is multiplied by the claustrophobia of the narrow, winding roads, laid out like a labyrinth due to the contradicting hotel signs pointing the two in the direction of nowhere and everywhere all at the same time. In Fear‘s claustrophobia doesn’t stop there, it’s multiplied even greater by having most of the action take place within Tom’s vehicle while adding an abrasive soundtrack to the entire affair as cinematographer David Katznelson employs a seemingly exclusive series of unrelenting, uncomfortably tight close-ups to frame it all.
The build-up is exceptional…as for the payoff, well the word nonsensical was mentioned.
The expertly crafted and executed slow-burn build-up slowly snowballs into a series of illogical decisions on the part of the young couple, a young couple that also fails to be presented as fully developed characters, instead the two come off as merely brainless bodies tasked with moving along an absurd plot as the film descends into abject, farcical silliness.
Jeremy Lovering shows, in his debut, a deft ability to build tension and fear, not only is he able to build those elements he’s able to maintain them, even building on top of it; unfortunately, it seems inevitable that In Fear could not withstand the weight of all of Lovering’s meticulously crafted anxiety as the unsettling atmosphere dissipates giving way to an inconceivable mess. However, a good time could be had if one remembers to turn off the portion of the brain in charge of reasoning and logic.
