Fear Itself

A fine, deft episode, based on Peter Crowther's short story of the same name, and adapted by Richard Chizmar and Jonathan Schaech (who also recently wrote the screenplay for the feature-length adapation of Ed Gorman's novel The Poker Club). Cult favorite Stuart Gordon, probably still best known for Re-Animator, directed a fine, small cast headlined by Elisabeth Moss, most visible of late, inside greater or lesser degrees of padding, in Mad Men.

A rather simple storyline: A particularly vile and prolific mass muderer, known for quickly killing his male victims and slowly cutting parts from his female victims and essentially eating them alive over the course of days or weeks, is delivered to a rundown Louisiana police precinct to be held overnight in their lockup. The sergeant in charge details two veteran patrolmen and a "boot," a rookie still in her probationary period, as the graveyard shift to stay with the "Eater." One of the veteran cops is openly contemptuous of young Officer Bannerman, though more because she's a woman than because of her "Goth" interests, tattoos, or that she reads Death Dance magazine (an intentionally poorly-disguised reference to Chizmar's Cemetery Dance horror-fiction magazine). For her part, Bannerman is somewhat intrigued by the presence of the monster in the lockup upstairs, her colleagues less entusiastic; the veterans turn out to be right, as the Eater begins some sort of magical chant shortly after settling into his cell, which causes some odd noises and shimmering in the precinct house. The veteran officers begin acting very aggressively toward Bannerman, as she begins to note that both of her shiftmates never seem to be in the same room with her at the same time, and to sit and move in exactly the same way. It's soon revealed that the Eater had apparently ripped the heart from the sergeant, and eaten it while it was still beating, so as to give the monster the magical ability to take on the sergeant's form, and then went on to do the same with the two elder cops in the station with Bannerman, who finds the front doors chained shut...and eventually starts finding the corpses of her colleagues. The Eater stops playing games with her, and reveals himself in his true form; as he attacks her, she fights back as viciously as she can, and finds the only effective weapon to use against the monster. The station house is infested with rats, and so there's a good supply of rat poison on hand...Bannerman rubs some into the neck wound the Eater has given her, and eats a large handful more of it herself. Then, in essentially her last act, she handcuffs the Eater to her, to hobble him when he realizes the amount of poison he's ingested by drinking her blood and generally chewing on her. He seems to be dying in painful spasms, cursing her now-dead body, as the show ends.

Stuart Gordon's love of cocked camera angles (surely a fan of the ABC Batman tv series of the '60s) and some clever scene transitions are only the flashiest elements of his work here, which brings an energy lacking in essentially all the previous episodes, and reinforces the solid if not, as presented, flawless script (most obvious nit to me: why would a rookie as resourceful as Bannerman, faced with a chained safety-glass door, not break it with her gun butt or, failing that, shoot it out, so as to get out and get some backup?). Better use of the soundtrack was made in this episode than in previous ones, as well...the setting allowed for some zydeco to be introduced, along with some appropriate world-music rhythms in the score, and there's at least one reasonably good jump-scare sound effect, the squawk of a police radio.

All told, this is about what I was expecting and hoping for from this series, which to say the least it hasn't been consistently providing. A few more like this one could make us all forgive the weaker entries, I suspect. If you missed it, this one will be visible on Hulu.com sometime in the next day or so, and I'd say it's worth the time.

An interview with Elisabeth Moss is here.

For more on Fear Itself, please see our Online Video Guide.

The first suspense (as opposed to supernatural horror) episode of Fear Itself proves to be a disappointment, and I suspect most of the blame this time lies with the direction, rather than with the script. Not that the very guessable "twist" ending scriptwriter Victor Salva (Jeepers Creepers) offers helps matters, but the uneven tone, utter lack of subtlety, and clumsy pacing of the episode, directed by John Landis, killed it much more efficiently than our drama's serial killers could hope to snuff any victim.

A bride (Maggie Lawson, most visible of late in Psych) is joking with her maids of honor as they prepare for the ceremony. As one bridesmaid goes to check on the groom, she remembers to pass along an envelope the officiating priest had given her, which he'd received from an unidentified woman. The typewritten note in the sealed envelope says only "The person you are about to marry is a serial killer." This disturbs the bride, but only slightly; she goes to the groom (James Roday, also of Psych) and has a playful moment with him, then returns to her dressing room, her anxiety not completely allayed. She doesn't tell her friends what the note says, but lets them know, indirectly, that it's not good news. She quizzes the priest, played as gamely as possible here by William B. Davis (most famous as the "Cigaret-Smoking Man" on The X-Files), as a nearly deaf, well-meaning, yet sometimes almost sinister fellow, who won't quite tell her about the deaths of her fiance's parents. After the ceremony, she speaks with the groom's uncle, one of a pair of identical twins (for no compelling reason, except perhaps in hopes of suggesting the multiple faces people can display, or just to add another layer of uncertainty to everything...however, little is made of this); the uncle lets the new wife know her husband spent some time in a mental hospital of some sort after the parents' utterly mysterious disappearance. Increasingly agitated, and without enough motivation to make it convincing, the new husband becomes visibly hostile to his wife, resentful that her brother, who opposed the sudden marriage after a quick courtship, refused to attend, and not happy that one of the bridesmaids had confronted him about the note. After some attempts by the bride to catch up with the mystery woman who'd given the priest the note, and a despondent phone call to the absent brother, the wife is pursued around the church by her husband, who traps her in a confessional. He then confesses from the other side of the booth that he'd recently had dinner with another woman while his fiancee was away, and guiltily assumes that this woman, who was taken with him to the point of having stalked him, was crazily attempting to cast a pall over the wedding by leaving a note about their evening. Meanwhile, we follow the mystery woman back to her house, which has at least one room filled with body-part trophies from murder victims, where she is revealed to be, to very little if any surprise, the bride's brother. The wife reveals that the note was meant for her new husband rather than for her, and she wonders if her spouse can handle not knowing what the note says. Meanwhile, the brother listens to the phone message his sister had left, wherein her suggestion she might be back at the family house tonight becomes threat to her meddling brother, who now has been clearly afraid of losing his partner in crime, rather than a desperate plea for help. Back in the church, the husband suggests that his new wife can tell him about the note when she's ready, and she assures him she will.

Unfortunately, any suspense this episode attempts to gin up, almost successfully in the church pursuit sequence, is usually undermined by Landis's attempts to be funny...rather than intensifying the audience's sense of the danger for our characters, the jokey bits tend to just stop things dead (it doesn't help that, with the mild exception of some of the women's banter at the beginning of the episode, that the humorous bits aren't funny). But Landis sure does milk the images of the icon statues around the church for whatever spookiness he can...the statues get more screentime than some of the actors with speaking roles. My housemate, walking by and catching a few minutes of the opening segment, asked if what I was watching was actually Fear Itself; assured that it was, she said it reminded her more of a Lifetime cable made-for-TV movie...and, except for the weak twist ending, it did resemble far too many of the video gothics (in the 1970s dangerous-romance novel sense) that station runs more than anything like a successful thriller. Even with a few nicely-composed shots; the series continues to be admirably well-produced on what's surely a modest to medium budget.

A pity. I strongly suspect next week's episode will be better, but the batting average so far is not encouraging.

For more on Fear Itself, please see our Online Video Guide.

Finally a good episode of Fear Itself, one written by Daniel Knauf, he most recently of Carnivale (the HBO dark fantasy historical drama), and one as well shot and acted as the previous two, this one directed by Ronny Yu.

Rather a simple story: a doting husband and father of two children is asked by his wife to run an errand, and is so wrapped up in his cell phone conversation with her he doesn't see the pickup truck that charges into the intersection and centerpunches his sedan, apparently killing the pickup's occupants and, it turns out, very nearly killing him. Indeed, he has an out-of-body experience at the hospital where he's being treated, and meets another disembodied spirit; this other spirit tells him that they're both dead. As it turns out, the second spirit is jumping the gun, and both men survive, but when they awaken, they discover that they have swapped bodies. And family man Dennis Mahoney is now occupying the stronger, more pain-resistant body of a prolific serial killer, The Family Man, Brautigan. And, worse, the serial killer is in his body.

Mahoney in Brautigan's body can't believe what is happening to him, and tries to convince Brautigan's court-appointed lawyer of his plight; the lawyer notes that "the transmigration of souls makes for a lousy defense." Brautigan in Mahoney's body comes to visit his incarcerated new friend, and proposes to help Mahoney if Mahoney will help him, in adjusting to their new lives. Brautigan also comes close to taunting Mahoney about inheriting Mahoney's life along with his body, and apologizes, but notes that he, Brautigan, is as close to Mahoney's family as Mahoney will get, as their new circumstances will allow.

Meanwhile, Mahoney has to cope as best he can with hostile police and guards, including one grief-stricken officer whose fiancee and her family were murdered by Brautigan. Brautigan, even in Mahoney's body and life still a maniac, initially seems to be getting by, even if he seems to have odd memory lapses and unprecedented fits of hostility and suspicion, but soon is consistently abusive to both his family and, less successfully in Mahoney's more pain-sensitive body, to strangers. Mahoney has nightmares about Brautigan and his intimacy with Mahoney's family, and manages to escape, wounded, from the local sheriff (it seems improbable that even a distracted Mahoney would forget to disarm the sheriff after knocking him senseless). Mahoney and Brautigan face off in Manhoney's house, Mahoney gets the upper hand just before the sheriff breaks in and shoots Bruatigan's body, and both the displaced men die again...apparently...but Mahoney is revived again, and finds himself in his own body. Weak but joyous that he is whole again, he seeks out his family, only to be warned by the various police and medical personnel on hand that he shouldn't...for Brautigan in Mahoney's body had snapped just before their confrontation, had raped and murdered Mahoney's wife and apparently raped Mahoney's daughter, leaving the child in shock...but capable, when asked by the police who had done all this to her family, of pointing to the man she saw attack them...her father. Mahoney's scream of anguish is the last thing we hear.

Again, a rather simple and straightforward horror variant on the stolen life/Secret Sharer theme, but aside from a believable lapse of judgememt on Mahoney's part (noted above), this script doesn't offer any remarkable stupidities, and manages to be both engrossing and moving as presented, even if not much, if any, new ground is broken...after the previous episodes, the danger is in overpraising this one, but this is an episode the series cast and crew should be proud of. Good performances by the adult cast, including Clifton Collins, Josie Davis, and Colin Ferguson, and Nicole Leduc is effective as the daughter particularly in her father's nightmare sequence.

It's really rather unfortunate that two weaker episodes were allowed to introduce the series, but we can hope that such upcoming episodes as (Jeepers Creepers scripter) Victor Salva's "In Sickness and in Health" with another intriquing warhorse of a premise, the mysterious warnings apparently from an anonymous stranger, and (horror- and suspense-fiction writer, Cemetery Dance editor and publisher) Richard Chizmar's "Eater," from which the still on Fear Itself's page here is drawn, will continue an improving trend. I suspect they will.

And I've decided I genuinely like the theme music...glad to be able to like at least one episode, too.

For more on Fear Itself, please see our Online Video Guide.

So far we don't have too much to fear from Fear Itself, other than having our time wasted, with well-produced offerings of very weak stories and scripts. There are a lot of ways to go wrong with any screenplay, but why take such unpromising work as what has been written, or at least what has been filmed from what was written, for these first two episodes and then lavish on them as much atmosphere and ingenuity as a mid-range television budget can afford? Why not solicit better scripts, or if that's not the problem, quit allowing someone to dumb them down so badly during production and/or post-production?

In this episode, we have a world-weary and vicious cop (Eric Roberts, reminding us of Robert Forster), who tortures, essentially to death, a suspect in the kidnapping of a US Senator's son...but before he can die, the obviously guilty kidnapper? accomplice? uncooperative witness? (we guess primary kidnapper, and we do have to guess) makes a dying declaration that he will haunt Harry the Cop (y'know, like that other vigilante with a badge, Dirty Harry). Harry the Cop is unimpressed, but so are his bosses, in their case by what apparently has become a pattern of brutality on Harry's part, and he is fired. We then skip ahead fifteen years, when Harry has established himself in a private eye practice no less bullying than his police career; he blackmails his first client we see, by providing the evidence against her husband for the agreed-upon $2000, and double that for the evidence he's also collected of the client's own extra-marital affair. Another woman (Cynthia Waltros, most visible recently on Lost) hires Harry and his assistant, played by a game Larry Giliard, Jr. (late of The Wire), to gather evidence of her husband's infidelity. She advises Harry that he can't use his surveillance van near their McMansion, but should set up in an improbably ramshackle abandoned house across the street (improbable, as one of my colleagues pointed out, only in that it would be left standing that close to a prefab development of any kind). It turns out that the ramshackle house has the vaguely-illustrated power to force anyone to face whatever they fear and hate most about themselves. In Harry's case, it's that he accidentally shot his brother to death with their policeman father's service revolver, and the father's bright idea is for both father and young Harry to bury the dead kid in the back yard and Never Speak of This; what they intended to tell or told the school authorities, etc., is not addressed. It turns out that Waltros's character is someone Harry had disfigured slightly, scarring her during an interrogation that when referred to in earlier scenes seemed quite separate from the kidnapping at the episode's beginning, yet if so, Waltros's character just happening to be the apparent kidnapper's sister seems to be a coincidence without a shred of believability. She's vowed revenge upon Harry for fifteen years, egged on by her brother's rather ineffectual ghost (the brother-ghost damned near whines when Harry manages to leave the haunted house before killing himself). He foils her attempt to shoot him, and refuses to shoot her with the handgun he wrestles from her. Happily, his assistant barges into her apartment, afraid of what Harry might do, and "accidentally" shoots Harry, who's still holding her handgun and standing over her as she shouts at him from the floor. Harry, however, having enjoyed his therapeutic breakthrough driven by the ghostly house, dies with a smile on his face.

I can only hope that Matt Venne's screenplay was completely messed over in the production of this handsome but stupid outing. As I commented on the pilot, I was hoping for a new Thriller, the wonderful anthology series hosted by and often featuring Boris Karloff, the most consistently good mixture of suspense- and horror-drama among those I've seen; what we have so far is more akin to HBO's Tales from the Crypt, a sorry, self-indulgent showcase consistently demonstrating that even the flashiest directors and a decent budget can't make much of anything out of an inane script.

Less optimistically, I look forward to at least some of the adaptations of stories by good writers we're promised. But they'd better make a better case to viewers quickly...Fear Itself's pilot was by some distance the lowest-rated of the commercial networks' 10p Thursday offerings last week.

For more on Fear Itself, please see our Online Video Guide.

A well-mounted but unspectacular start for this new anthology series, from the folks who've brought us Masters of Horror on Showtime and Masters of Science Fiction on ABC in the U.S. The pilot's good to look at, but not so great to think about. Thirteen episodes have been promised by NBC, assuming the ratings hold, and while scheduling a horror- and suspense-drama hour after Last Comic Standing might seem an odd sort of "flow" for the night, it does therefore follow both CSI and Supernatural on other nets and might well gather at least a slice of their audiences.

Producer/screenwriter Mick Garris adapted a short story by actor and bookseller Del Howison, who's been branching out into writing and anthology-editing; young director Breck Eisner has done some television hours and one theatrical feature, Sahara. The episode's production is top-notch, particularly since it's striving for the grimy, desperate feel that's become rather familiar in lots of recent US/Canadian horror films...too familiar, really. The cast is quite good, as well, with Rachel Miner (most often seen of late in Californication) and Jeffrey Pierce acquitting themselves well, and Jesse Plemons allowed to play a character a bit more quick-witted than his Friday Night Lights role, if not vastly moreso...he might even remind you of John C. Reilly here.

We begin with four young men, including the brothers who go by "Point" (Pierce) and "Lemon" (Plemons), who are obviously on the lam after some sort of criminal activity, with one of the four critically wounded. They're sticking to the back roads to avoid drawing attention from the police, but the potholes are doing the injured guy no favors, and they go over a metal spar sunk into the road that tears at the guts of their engine (and seems a bit large for anyone to miss seeing, even if distracted). Their truck shot, they trudge across a snowy field, hauling their fallen comrade in a canoe, to a large, very rustic compound, where they let themselves in. They hear a radio playing some sort of drama, but meet no people, till a young woman, Chelsea (Miner), meets them with a rifle. They quickly demonstrate to her that they outgun her, and she offers to tend to their friend's wound, since the compound has an infirmary. Chelsea, it turns out, has two sisters, one of whom is mute; the only other person in the compound, apparently, is their priest, and he's also in the infirmary. The fourth criminal, Diego (Stephen Martines), is lured away by Virginia (Mircea Monroe), on the suggestive pretext of helping her in the barn; Virginia then traps Diego in a pit. Meanwhile, Chelsea sends the brothers into the main house and its kitchen, where the mute sister serves them a stew with an oddly unfamiliar sort of meat to it, while Chelsea sews her victim's mouth shut, apparently in preparation for his dark fate. Point gets suspicious, and goes to the infirmary, sending Lemon out to find Diego. Point discovers his comrade's corpse, with a stake in its heart, and finds that the priest has been chained to his bedpost. Point tries to rescue the priest, only to be foiled by an incredibly strong, unseen monster. This turns out, to no one's surprise, to be a vampire.

Lemon, who explains several times that he's the third Lemuel in his family and so was stuck with an unlikely nickname, is clubbed by Virginia and hung up to bleed out; rescued, not quite in time, by Point, who accidentally kills the mute sister in the process. Lemon has been bitten by the vampire he was meant to feed, and, as Chelsea and Virginia desperately explain, will become a vampire himself soon. Point is unconvinced till he does so; Vampire Lemon bites Virginia before Point skewers him, apparently fatally, with an iron poker (rather than anything made of wood). Virginia volunteers to be dropped into the pit/trap to, as it turns out, help trap the vampire. Although the compound has existed for at least a hundred years, and there once was a fairly large population of Romanians on hand to help kill the vampire among them, it never occurred to anyone to trap it and burn it till just now, when Chelsea and Point successfully do so. Chelsea and her family have apparently been luring passers-by to their deaths for at least two decades, to judge by the license plates they hang as improbable trophies, for a family so grimly bound to their duty to minimize their vampire's depredations that they never leave the compound; the priest was not only the women's Father but their actual father, who had been offering his blood incrementally to the vampire, to spare his daughters, whenever they couldn't waylay stranded motorists. Now, the vampire slain at last, and no one left alive behind them, Chelsea makes ready to leave the compound for the first time in her life, when she notes that Point seems to be bleeding; he pulls open his jacket to discover that his brother had bit him, as well. With a becoming Eastern fatalism, Chelsea closes and bars the gate to the compound again. Whether it's guilt or an unwillingness to simply shoot and burn her new partner, and be done with all this, is left for the viewer to decide.

Why or how the compound dwellers have a working radio without electric power or any obvious way to get batteries isn't explained, any more than the rather easy destruction of the vampire is excused by a cursory "many have tried to kill the vampire, and failed." But the lack of explanation of the crime the quartet were fleeing from is a nice touch (given the firepower they display offhandedly, we can suspect it's gun-running), and there are a few decent, if again rather familiar (even intentionally referential) thrown-away bits (such as the mute sister's sketches of their victims), and, as noted, a nice attention to design and set decoration that might've been lavished on the story, as well. I hope that this is the weakest episode in the series, and that NBC asked to lead things off with this one because Plemons is a star of one of their other series (ABC certainly made that a primary criterion for which episodes of Masters of SF they ran last summer). I fear that might not be the case, and we won't be shuddering for the right reasons from Fear Itself, but given the talent involved, I remain optimistic.

For more on Fear Itself, please see our Online Video Guide.