Fear, Inc. (2016)
Starring Lucas Neff, Caitlin Stasey, Chris Marquette, Stephanie Drake, Abigail Breslin
Directed by Vincent Masciale
With helmer Vincent Masciale and scribe Luke Barnett best known for their hot TV property-parodying viral videos such as “A Game of Thrones Halloween” and “The Walking Fred,” it was pretty safe to assume that their feature debut, the comedy shocker Fear, Inc., wasn’t going to stray all that far from their tried and tested formula.
I certainly wasn’t wrong, the only difference this time being that the filmmaking duo leave much-loved television shows behind them to tackle just about every cult horror movie ever known to man. Having said that, though, whilst Fear, Inc. is a horror-comedy at heart, the backbone of the film is its familiar premise that’s been unapologetically ripped straight out of David Fincher’s 1997 thriller The Game. Up to this point that might sound like an even worse idea than the recent Cabin Fever remake, but I use the term “unapologetically” in the best possible sense in that Masciale and Barnett, and their insidious four lead players, keep piling on reminders of just how self-aware the whole production is – I even gave up counting how many times Fincher’s flick was actually mentioned by the cast.
Cribbing and send-ups aside, Fear, Inc.’s cast and crew are masters in the art of deception, making sure the film feels really quite fresh, despite all the familiar formulas at play, and this is buoyed by the fact the lead player, Joe (Neff), is the polar opposite of Michael Douglas’ Nicholas Van Orton character.
For those who haven’t seen The Game, Fear Inc. follows down-on-his-luck Joe Foster, the ultimate horror nerd who’s yet to find the ultimate scare. He loves to peruse local haunts with his girlfriend, Lindsey (Stasey), but he’s seen every scare tactic in the book a million times before so nothing even startles him anymore–that is, until a particularly shady character hands him a Fear, Inc. business card offering tailor-made terrifying experiences that come at a very high price.
Joe and Lindsey initially shrug it off, but then it gets brought up a few days later when they hold a Halloween soiree with their best friends, married couple Ben (Marquette) and Ashleigh (Drake). Ben has heard of the company by word of mouth and tells Joe not to mess with them as they are into some “seriously messed up shit,” and lo and behold, those were just the magic words Joe needed to hear to urge him to make that fatal call we all knew he was going to make sooner or later.
The voice at the other end tells him there are no more tickets left, but that’s just the very first in a seriously long line of red herrings to throw Joe, and us, off the scent of what’s really at play, and it’s not long before things start kicking off: The house alarm gets triggered, intruders crop up in the garden, and then things move to an all-new level when a TV news flash reports that Joe has killed off everyone else in the house and his next-door neighbor, Bill Peterson, played by Richard Riehle, who puts in a hilarious performance as the nosy neighbor everyone loves to hate.
Of course, Joe knows his horror tropes and thinks he can’t be punk’d that easily so he just takes it all in his stride, convinced it’s just his horror junky wet dream coming true, but Masciale and Barnett know exactly how to push an audience’s buttons and our expectations get twisted on themselves over and over to the point where it just becomes impossible to trust anything and anyone anymore. By the time Joe’s paranoia reaches Van Orton proportions, we’re pretty much on his same wavelength, and that’s all down to Barnett’s serpentine script and some pretty perfidious performances from Neff’s three supporting actors.
Even the film’s effects team seems to be in on the joke, cleverly mixing tackier than tacky props with some disgustingly realistic practical effects, making it nigh impossible to know if people are really being maimed or dismembered or if it’s all just part of a fastidiously planned out prank.
Being the horror fan that I am, the film certainly appealed to me, especially with all the in-jokes littered throughout, but I’m not so sure if people new to the genre or who aren’t so familiar with horror films of decades gone by will appreciate it quite that much. As for the relentless references to The Game, if you haven’t seen Fincher’s classic, then you probably should give that one a watch first; otherwise, a lot of material is going to be lost on you. And if you have already seen it, despite the frighteningly familiar premise, Masciale and Barnett pull out all the stops to mix things up and make sure nothing is as it might seem, ensuring you’ll be scratching your paranoid noggin right ’till the very brutal bombshell ending.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
