Photo Courtesy of Hot Docs
FEAR ITSELF
Directed by: Charlie Lyne
As someone who has dedicated a large amount of my life to horror movies, and has furthermore already addressed all the reasons I enjoy being scared, I was profoundly bored by Fear Itself. Lyne presents this cinematic essay in a series of several dozen horror clips spanning many different countries and eras, while the sleepy, monotone voice of Amy E. Watson narrates a musing about fear, movies and how everything is turned sideways when humans experience tragedy (in this particular case, a car crash that took the life of her sister).
Although the question of why humans are attracted to horror is worth a discussion, in Fear Itself everything is such basic knowledge it is hard to keep focus on what Watson is saying. Between vague statements about human instinct (such as the fact that we’ll often make shapes out of the dark), or some facts that are very common knowledge for the morbidly curious, (such as Jeffrey Dahmer’s obsession with The Exorcist III), this documentary feels strewn together and uninformed, with nothing to chew on for the audience. Its greatest offense, however, is how frequently the narrator waxes poetic about nonsense, such as with her musings about Frankenstein, Frankenstein’s monster and the ideas of humanity that connect the two. Overall, this documentary feels less like an interesting conversation and more like getting stuck at a party talking to someone who just finished first year Philosophy. (Richelle Charkot)