Fear

WARNING: This review is hidden because it reveals the content of the film.
Click here to show this review. There are a lot of things that work in "Fear" and you won't ever get bored watching it but the story depends too much on its characters acting stupid for my taste, and the story is one that we’ve seen before, and many times at that. Nicole (Reese Witherspoon) is a regular teenage girl who meets David (Mark Wahlberg), a charming young man who sweeps her off her feet. Despite the fact that her father Steven (William Petersen) doesn’t like him from the get-go, Nicole and David begin dating. Too bad for Nicole that David turns out to be a crazy person!

I’d like to point out the title of the film as a first hint that this is not a great movie."Fear", the most generic horror/thriller name you could ever think of and on top of basically giving away the premise, it feels lazy from the start. I think it shows hints that this movie was basically a formula that was applied to teens and the originality stopped at that. On the plus side, the actors are pretty good. Mark Wahlberg plays a psycho boyfriend well, Reese Witherspoon and William L. Petersen also give some good performances, particularly when things start spinning out of control and they have to show a full range of emotion from being happy, to being bewildered to angry to all-out terrified.

My problem is that their characters just aren't that intelligent and it gets frustrating to watch them make obvious mistakes (to the point where you'll be screaming at the screen "No! Don't do that!!") The characters say that they're really afraid of David but they don't act like are afraid of him because they don't do simple things to help themselves feel safe. For example, the day after Nicole and David take their relationship to the next level, David acts like a psycho in front of her and she decides to break up with him. Afterwards, she never thinks to change the door code to her house, even though she gave David the code earlier and he continues to threaten her. I’m certain the writers could have come up with a better way for their villain to enter the house than to have their characters’ I. Q. drop for the rest of the movie.

The conclusion feels really manufactured, although I will say that it does feel pretty exciting to watch because once again, the actors do a good job making you care about their characters. I know some people are going to enjoy this movie, and I wouldn’t criticize anyone for doing so, but "Fear" feels too similar to every other "psycho boyfriend/girlfriend" movie. If you remember liking this one, it’ll eventually get replaced on your DVD shelf by another similar movie and then you’ll forget about this one completely. Although there are some interesting elements introduced and some characters you'll like, the ending of “Fear” is rotten and the story just isn't that well put together for it to stand out. (On DVD, January 20, 2013)