Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on June 3, 2008, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
A prime concern among fright fans regarding the transmogrification of Showtime’s Masters of Horror to the environs of broadcast TV, as NBC’s Fear Itself, has been whether its horrific content would be watered down as a result. Certainly, with Standards and Practices to answer to, the new series can’t aspire to the moments of sublime shock that its cable predecessor could achieve. Yet considering that some of Masters’ second-season entries sublimated narrative coherence and plausibility to the desire to splatter around as much gore and unpleasantness as possible, the restrictions on the bloodshed could be seen as a positive. The Fear Itself team has had to focus as much on the psychological as the physiological to generate its scares, hooking viewers with storytelling and tension rather than the simple anticipation of the grisly punchlines.
So how does it fare? Well, NBC provided the first trio of episodes for review, and two out of three ain’t bad. The premiere installment, The Sacrifice, digresses from Masters of Horror in that its director, Breck Eisner, has sci-fi but no straight fear fare on his résumé. Yet he proves himself capable of wringing palpable atmosphere out of the script by Mick Garris (who retains a creator credit on the show, despite having departed it during the development stage) and a great scary-movie-waiting-to-happen location. Previously seen in Ginger Snaps Back, Fort Edmonton Park in wintry Canada here stands in as an old settlement that first appears to be abandoned when a quartet of criminals stumble upon it, after their car breaks down while they’re fleeing a heist. Of course, spooky dwellings in tales like this are never actually uninhabited, and the foursome soon encounter a trio of pale but lovely young women eking out a colonial-style existence there.
At first the girls seem helpful, tending to the wounds of an injured member of the group, and friendly—very friendly, in ways that one of the guys can’t help but respond to. Before long, their true intentions are revealed via a great sight gag, and a more monstrous presence lurking around the fort makes itself known. Though there aren’t too many surprises, the story is well-paced with a series of tense confrontations, punctuated by a few nasty bits that do push the broadcast envelope for onscreen grue. The best chill, however, derives from a simple, startling reveal involving two upside-down characters.
Jeffrey Pierce as the most level-headed of the gang and Stephen Martines as the most impulsive one deliver solid performances, and they and Rachel Miner and Mircea Monroe, as the most prominent of the fort dwellers, play well off each other. The best performance of all is given by Jesse (Friday Night Lights) Plemons as the slow-witted but sympathetic Lemmon, who provides The Sacrifice its humor as well as being involved in a couple of its most disturbing moments. Eisner and cinematographer/Masters veteran Attila Szalay bestow a feature-film veneer on the proceedings, climaxing with a small-scale-spectacular finale that nonetheless leaves one puzzled as to why the course of action taken by Miner’s heroine was never attempted before. Nevertheless, it’s a solid start to the series, intense enough for genre buffs without becoming so extreme or perverse that average TV audiences might be turned off.
The next episode, Spooked, holds up the quality as Brad Anderson returns from his well-regarded Masters installment Sounds Like to helm another examination of a guy who doesn’t like what he hears. In this case, the protagonist is a private investigator named Bender (Eric Roberts), who’s aptly named—due to his habit of tippling from a flask while on the job as well as his past as a police officer who strained the rules in dealing with suspects. He’s been making a good if not entirely honest living snooping on unfaithful spouses when he’s approached by Meredith (Cynthia Watros from Lost), who wants him to garner photographic proof of her husband’s infidelity. She’s even got the perfect place from which he can conduct the stakeout: a broken-down, abandoned house within spying distance of her own much more lavish home. Once sequestered inside, Bender discovers that he needs to be less concerned about the activities across the street than with what’s rattling around his hiding place—and his past.
As he did in Sounds Like, Anderson makes unsettling use of audio as Bender hears strange voices and echoes of his personal demons through headphones that are supposed to capture evidence of other’s misdeeds. Matthew Venne’s script does a nice job of meshing the PI’s past with his present—though one connection can be guessed before it is revealed—and there’s a neat recurring visual motif involving strange painted figures on the old house’s wall. A couple of overly histrionic moments aside, Roberts holds the center well as the tormented Bender, with a vivid turn by Jack Noseworthy as a victim of his prior brutal tendencies. Szalay shot this one too, and the visuals are properly shadowy and menacing; only an abrupt, unlikely conclusion dispels the quiet chill that Anderson and co. successfully build up.
Domestic tragedy is ultimately revealed to be a key component of Spooked’s backstory, and the plot of Ronny Yu’s subsequent The Family Man hinges on the threat of it occurring. Dennis Mahoney (Colin Ferguson) is a good, churchgoing husband and father with a loving wife and kids and a happy life—until a car accident sends him into a hospital bed alongside a serial killer (Clifton Collins Jr.) who’s been shot up by the cops. The murderer, Richard Brautigan (an odd reference to the late satirical/counterculture author), winds up switching identities with Dennis, who wakes up to find himself being interrogated, and then thrown in jail. What’s worse, he soon realizes that the maniac, in his body, has now infiltrated his home, and imminently threatens the lives of his family…
Or so one would expect the story to play out. Instead, Daniel (Carnivàle) Knauf’s script takes the ill-informed tack of having Brautigan—who we’re told has tortured, raped and murdered dozens of victims, and videotaped the crimes to boot—suddenly decide he wants to settle down. Brautigan-in-Dennis starts paying regular visits to Dennis-in-Brautigan in jail, cajoling him for tips on how to convincingly live Dennis’ life. This is hardly a way to build suspense, and it undercuts plausibility too; Dennis’ frequent meetings with Brautigan never seem to pique the interest of law enforcement, nor are the FBI ever seen getting involved in the villain’s interstate murder case. Collins, whose features are made for playing multiple murderers (he starred in Rampage: The Hillside Strangler Murders) and other miscreants, effectively and sympathetically plays against type, where Ferguson has a couple of good Stepfather-ish moments where the cracks in his family-man persona begin to show. But what would seem to be a foolproof premise is frittered away, amongst many heavy-handed religious overtones.
Asian fantasy/horror master Yu stages his best setpiece early, as the briefly deceased Dennis and Brautigan wander through a hospital where everyone else is frozen in time; otherwise, his direction is undistinguished. Ironically, this weakest of the first round of Fear Itselfs has the best ending, a nasty little kicker that demonstrates the disturbing depths The Family Man might have plumbed. The episode isn’t let down by a network-mandated failure of nerve, though, but by a misconceived approach to its own premise. With episodes by Stuart Gordon, Larry Fessenden and American Psycho’s Mary Harron waiting in the wings, Fear Itself clearly has the gumption to effectively deliver televised terror throughout the rest of the summer.
