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32%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #8,913
...out of 21,031 movies
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It's death-by-fear (aka scared-to-death) in this deceptively psychological thriller. The hero, Mike brings his friends to his grandparents' house for a Halloween party wherein they will all dress up as their innermost fears. Mike's fear is that he's inherited a homicidal legacy from his father. Mike's father was a serial killer who murdered his mother right in front of him when Mike was five before committing suicide. Mike's fear manifests itself in his inability to commit to his girlfriend of 4 1/2 years, Peg for fear that he will kill her too. Everything gets rolling when an ancient Indian totem wooden figure named Morty comes to life and starts killing off Mike's friends by making their worst fears come true. The ultimate confrontation comes when Mike has to face his greatest fear - his own father.
--IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: January 25, 2008
After sitting through the previous film in this series last night and subsequently ranking it in the top twenty worst films of all time, it should go without saying that I didn't have much hope for the sequel; I mean, honestly, how often does a sequel outdo its predecessor? Well, even an Andy Warhol film would have been better than that piece of shit, so I realize that that praise alone isn't exactly something that a filmmaker would want to print out and tack up on his or her wall for inspiration. However, The Fear: Resurrection was leagues above the first film in terms of its entertainment value, and while I wouldn't advise you readers to immediately head out and hunt down a copy, I do have to admit that it turned out to be better than it had any right to be.
The storyline for this one shares a lot of similarities to the previous film, but at the same time, it's a radical departure from the storyline that was presented there; in fact, save for the "death by your fears" angle and the wooden mannequin, the filmmakers pretty much ignored everything that was shown there. This was an extremely smart move. Anyway, we begin by watching a young child out with his mother on Halloween night, and from there, we watch as mother dearest stops at the scene of an accident to see if she can help. What she finds is that a man has run a stranger's car off the road and is now proceeding to butcher said stranger with an ax. Needless to say, once the serial killer realizes that he has an audience, he quickly dispatches of the mother as well before placing the young child in his trunk and driving off.
Twenty years later, we meet up with Mike Hawthorne (Gordon Currie), the aforementioned boy who had a close call with the killer. It's the day before Halloween, and he's set up a Halloween party of sorts to be held at his grandparent's house along with his girlfriend Peg (Stacy Grant) and a half-dozen of his closest friends. Mike has ulterior motives for hosting this party, but that's treading into spoiler territory and will be left for the viewer to discover. The theme of this party just so happens to be exploring your worst fears, and as part of the theme, each guest is expected to dress up as a representation of their fear; for example, the girl with claustrophobia comes decked out in a cardboard box, while the guy with a fear of sharks comes dressed up as Jaws himself. The real highlight of the party, however, comes when Mike breaks out our good friend Morty and decides to incorporate him into the festivities. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Morty once again springs to life and starts to dispatch of the party-goers by using their fears against them, and we have ourselves a film. Making cameo appearances are both Betsy Palmer and Larry Pennell as the grandparents.
The Fear: Resurrection has its flaws, let me make that clear; it's not a particularly great film, nor is it an extremely memorable one. The acting is once again "wooden" (though it is much better compared to the last film), the main villain is still a man in an unbelievable rubber wood suit, and the storyline still has some huge problems working against it. Making this one even worse than the previous film is the fact that Morty now spits out more corny one-liners than Arnold Schwarzenegger did back in his prime, and trust me when I say that a latter day Freddy Krueger he isn't.
However, I did say that it was a decent little movie, and I do stand by that statement. It seems as though the filmmakers realized that the idea of a wooden mannequin terrorizing kids in the woods was a wee bit campy, and as such, they had a little more fun with it this time around. Now, it's far from a horror comedy or anything like that, but it's obvious from the opening credits that nobody was taking this half as seriously as the filmmakers did during the shooting of the previous film. It almost feels like a Troma flick at times, in the sense that nobody thought for a second that they were making a masterpiece, so everyone basically just said "fuck it" and had a good time in front of the camera. A masterpiece it isn't and it doesn't even compare to the better films from Troma, but it's much easier to sit through than the abysmal film that preceded it.
This is the film that The Fear wanted to be. It's still far from a perfect film, but it is moderately entertaining if you're a fan of cheesy horror from the likes of Full Moon. Bottom line? I'm not going to give it a recommendation, but I'm not going to bash the hell out of it either. 4/10.
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