Coroner’s Report: Fear Itself

Posted by Robert Fure (robert@filmschoolrejects.com) on October 2, 2009

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.  And bad made for TV horror. ~ The Coroner

With an introduction like that you’re probably thinking that Fear Itself is bad made for TV horror, but that’s only partially true.  Like other horror anthologies (Masters of Horror, Hunger) you’re going to get plenty of mediocre with a few doses of pretty good and this series is no different.  It was created by Mick Garris, who also made Masters of Horror for Showtime Networks.  Fear Itself was intended to have 13 episodes, though after the season was interrupted by the Beijing Olympics, NBC decided not to air the last 5 episodes and later announced they were cancelling the series.  The deck was probably stacked against them from the start, with horror on TV not very prevalent right now and a series that was more like 13 mini-movies, each with their own cast, production crew, and locations, rather than an on-going series.

You can now own the entire series presented on four double-sided DVDs in a pretty cool tombstone hugging skeleton collectors … cover?  It’s not quite a box.  So we’ll call it a cover.  But either way it’s pretty nifty.  Though the skeleton isn’t exactly hugging the tombstone either.  He’s kind of leaning against it.  Whatever, it’s still cool!  I would have preferred single-sided discs to reduce the change of smudging or scratching something important, but this cost saving measure keeps the entire series priced right around $24, which ain’t too shabby.

In terms of the KILLeR report, each episode is pretty different, but I’ll give sort of a general overview of what you can expect.

Kills

Each episode can include anything from zero to three or so kills.  Rarely will you get much past four kills in the series.

Ills

Since it was made for NBC broadcast, there aren’t too many instances of gross gore, but there is some blood, the occasional monstrous act, or something creepy.

Lust

Again, made for TV.  Some cute ladies here and there, but you’ll have no trouble keeping it in your pants.

Learning

A whole smattering of the usual lessons about not trusting strangers, rich white women, or people who disappear for weeks and then come home not quite right.

Review

The episodes are all well produced and well acted.  This is a well refined series where the weak spots are generally not practical or actors or anything, but just pretty lame stories. My favorite episode of the entire series was definitely Skin & Bones, which was about a man possessed by a Wendigo after disappearing into the freezing wilderness for entirely too long.  When he comes back, possessed, he’s got that murderous hunger inside of him.  The lead character is played by Doug Jones, who for once isn’t covered in tons of prosthetics, and he does a great job and definitely brings the creepy.  The biggest let down in the series for me was Darren Bousman’s New Year’s Day, which had a great concept (zombies!), a cool writer (Steve Niles) and starred Briana Evigan (hotness!) but was pretty boring for much of it.  It does have a pretty unique twist at the end that is interesting and worth watching.  Saying it was a let down doesn’t mean it’s a bad episode either, it just means that when I heard about it I was totally excited but ended up not loving it.  It is perhaps the best episode to get a handle on the entire season – something you’re very excited about that is less-than-stellar because the whole time they’re prepping you for the twist! ending, rather than telling a straight up story.

All in all, this is a pretty good series and a great value for the entire series on DVD.  I’d say rent it, but watching like 10 hours of stuff that’s rented takes forever, so for the low price I suggest just buying it and watching it at your leisure.

On the Live Side: A handful of really strong episodes and a great theme song from Serj Tankian.

On the Dead Side: Not all of the episodes are great and a few might even put you to bed.

On the Other Side: The episode In Sickness and In Health features James Roday (hilarious!) and Maggie Lawson (hot!) aka, Spencer and Detective O’Hara from Psych!

Read more articles by Robert Fure