‘A Fantastic Fear of Everything’ Movie Review

 BY GRETCHEN GREEAR

 

Hollywood’s newest horror-comedy starring Simon Pegg is a psychedelic, bizarre and at times, unsettling, movie experience.  In “A Fantastic Fear of Everything,” Pegg plays Jack, a children’s author turned crime novelist who develops an irrational fear of being murdered after researching the lives of serial killers.

Going into this movie, I knew it would be a little scatterbrained due to the context of the plot, but the storyline becomes too disorganized and ultimately, hard to follow.  It seems like there are 10 different stories going on simultaneously. For instance, Jack’s fear of being murdered due to the writing and research of serial killers could be one full plot of the movie, and it would be funny. But the plot becomes too cluttered when a Hollywood executive producer picks up one of Jack’s scripts, making things too complicated. It felt like this film was trying to be too many things at once and was not able to commit to being something cognitive.

As for the actual acting in the film, I usually appreciate off-kilter humor, but I felt that much of it was forced. This disappointed me because I’m a big fan of Pegg. I think he’s great in “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz,” but this movie didn’t impress me much. I don’t think I can pin the lack of humor totally on Pegg; a lot of it had to with the writing.

What I did appreciate was the obvious use of imagination the writers had when coming up with the imagery for the film. I think they played around with the fact that Jack was a children’s author because many scenes consist of bright, bold colors and a lot of animation is used.  That aspect of the film was refreshing; I like seeing movies that play around with integrating fantasy in an adult film.

This is one movie that I can neither recommend nor discourage viewers from seeing. I personally, was not in love with the movie, but people who enjoy indie-style comedies might really enjoy it, The same goes for Simon Pegg fans. It really depends on what your taste in movies is. I think this movie had the potential to be an awesome film, but it went in too many directions narratively.

 

Rating: 2/5