Depicting on-screen characters as they slowly succumb to terror is probably one of the most effective ways to frighten an audience. In Fear - the taut, tense debut from British director Jeremy Lovering - exploits this principle to the max.
Roosevelt’s often-quoted observation that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself” feels particularly apt when watching Lovering’s thriller, as so much of the film’s unsettling atmosphere comes from watching the terrified reactions of the characters themselves, rather than from any overt “jump” moments or obvious scares.
Alice Englert (who also plays the lead in Beautiful Creatures) and Iain De Caestecker star as Lucy and Tom, a couple who become lost en-route to a music festival in rural Ireland. Struggling to find a local hotel, the pair soon find themselves driving in circles, the narrow country roads transformed into a nightmarish maze, as the sky outside slowly turns to dusk. When Lucy starts to spot menacing, masked figures lurking in the darkness, she and Tom descend into bickering, nervousness, and overpowering paranoia.
While shooting the film, Lovering opted to withhold the script from his two leads, leaving them unaware of where the story was going, or what would happen next. This technique clearly paid off, as Lucy and Tom’s uncertainty and panic feel alarmingly real at times, and In Fear maintains an authentic sense of dread throughout. Anyone who likes their thrillers to come complete with a dose of old-fashioned, slow-burn creepiness should definitely check it out.
Another recent release that ranks highly on the fear-factor is Blair Erickson’s supernatural horror-thriller Banshee Chapter. Unlike In Fear, Banshee Chapter is frightening in a very familiar sense: the film blends found-footage style camerawork with more conventional storytelling, and is packed with jumps, shocks, and edge-of-your-seat scares.
Erickson’s film takes its inspiration from a series of real-life, highly unethical drug experiments carried out by the US government in the 1960s, known as MK-ULTRA. In the film, aspiring writer James (True Blood’s Michael McMillian) manages to get hold of the drug used in the experiment, but mysteriously disappears shortly after sampling the illicit substance. His old friend, journalist Anne (Katia Winter), decides to investigate. Teaming up with a famous counter-culture novelist Blackburn (played by The Silence of the Lamb’s Ted Levine), Anne slowly uncovers the horrifying, otherworldly truth behind the drug trials.
In some ways, Banshee Chapter is a solid, but fairly unremarkable found-footage supernatural chiller. The film is effectively scary, and the shocks are well-executed, but, when it comes down to it, there’s little here that hasn’t been done before. That said, Ted Levine – who gets all the best lines –is consistently brilliant throughout, his scenes infusing the narrative with some much-needed humour and grit. The true life horrors behind the film also add an interesting subtext to the story, and anyone unfamiliar with MK-ULTRA will probably find it difficult not to start googling the illegal drug trails immediately after watching. Anyone fascinated by conspiracy theories, government cover-ups, and shady cold-war secrets should definitely check this out.
In Fear Score: 3.5/5 , Banshee Chapter Score: 3/5
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