The Fear (1995).

“There is no devil but fear.”

Directed by Vincent Robert

Written by Ron Ford

Starring Eddie Bowz, Heather Medway, Ann Turkel, and Vince Edwards

1. (The Stage)

Richard is a grad student and for his school project, he’d like to conduct “fear therapy” at a cabin in the woods that’s been in Richard’s family. There’s also a life-sized wooden doll named Morty that’s been part of Richard’s family for years and he lives in a drawer in the cabin. So Richard brings his friends and some rapists up to the cabin to face their fears.

2. (The Good)

There are a few genuinely creepy scenes in this featuring Morty. Once he comes to life and starts moving around and making old wooden sounds, he’s pretty unsettling. Unfortunately, it only takes a minute to see the rubber in the suit scrunching up as he moves. When stationary though, Morty looks awesome. There’s also a pretty neat scene in which Morty is seemingly controlling someone else’s movements.

There are a lot of effective visuals in the film, most of which come from either masks or this weird Christmas theme park that just happens to be in the middle of nowhere. It’s over an hour walk to the nearest civilization, so why does this Christmas park exist?

Wes Craven makes a cameo appearance during the beginning and end of the movie as Richard’s psychology professor. He’s the only one who seems like he knew what he was doing.

3. (The Bad)

The setup seems pretty cool - get these people to this secluded cabin to work on their fears. Inevitably, that means that we’ll see them succumb to these fears in creative ways, right? Wrong. Instead, we get a lot of relationship melodrama, two (yes, two) rapists, a sprinkling of incest, and a few very boring deaths that have nothing to do with people’s fears.

The deaths were particularly disappointing. There is no gore and they are not creative. One guy is hit in the head with a wooden door a few times with the amount of force that seems like it would annoy you more than kill you. Another, who is afraid of spiders, is hit in the face with a log while trying to rape someone. A girl is thrown from a second floor balcony onto some pine needles and dies. The only death actually caused by Morty is when he makes someone shoot themselves in the mouth, but that happens off-screen.

Unfortunately, despite the great looking doll that is Morty, this is a very boring horror film. The team here went for a more serious approach to the psychology of fear, bringing out Richard’s suppressed memories of telling his dad that he was being cucked by Santa, his dad killing his mom, and then Richard curing himself by taking a puzzle ball from his younger self, throwing it at his mom’s animated corpse, and then putting it back together again. It sounds a lot more fun than it is, unfortunately.

4. (The Ugly)

90’s fashion was the worst.

Let’s examine the relationship between the token dreadlocked white guy Troy and his sister, who just happens to show up at his place and agrees to just head up to the cabin. During initial introductions, she says that her mom adopted him when she was 14 and then she had to take care of him, so she lost her childhood. What a great sister! Later on, after Troy loses his shit because his best friend’s girlfriend won’t bang him, he tries to fuck his own sister, telling her that they’re not “really” related. Then she tells him that they are related, because well, he’s her son.

I thought that was the ugliest thing in the film, until this kid popped in at the end with this haircut.

5. (The End)

I saw a lot of people excited about this title, and when it was over, I was scratching my head wondering why. This thing was a slog to get through. It features an unlikable bunch that you hope bite the bullet in interesting ways, and unfortunately that never happens. It’s got no gore, nudity, or other trappings of good exploitative horror movies and none of the shock value or great characters that elevated horror often provides.

In terms of the Vinegar Syndrome disc, you get two new commentary tracks (one from the director Vincent Robert, and another with an executive producer named Greg H. Sims and an hour long making-of documentary called Face to Face with The Fear.