By Tristan Bishop
Small casts, man. Low budget horror films with small casts always start the old alarm bells going. More often than not you’ve got ninety minutes or so of tedium awaiting you. The same goes for single location films. Unless we’re talking Alfred Hitchcock then these generally don’t come off all that well – setting your film in one place takes a big set of (figurative) balls and a certain level of literal cinematic mastery. Unfortunately it seems the world currently has a surplus of the former and a lack of the latter. You can only imagine my intense joy, then, when I came across In Fear. A low-budget British horror/thriller about two characters. Set almost entirely in A CAR. I’ll be honest, I readied myself for an hour and a half of boredom and settled comfortably in my seat.
There’s not a great amount of plot I’m able to recount for this film without major spoilers, but here’s what I can – Ian De Caestecker (TV’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D) and Alice Englart (Beautiful Creatures) star as Tom and Lucy, a young couple who have recently gotten together. They are driving to a music festival in Ireland and have stopped off at a pub, where Lucy visits the bathroom. Tom insists they leave the pub swiftly, stating that he has had to buy the pub a round after a misunderstanding with a local. He then proceeds to tell Lucy that he has booked them a hotel room for the first night. Lucy initially resists, saying she had arranged to meet friends on the festival site. She soon relents however, and they set off in search of the hotel. Unfortunately the place seems a little off the beaten track, and eventually they realise they have been going round in circles. No matter which way they read their map and the road signs they always seem to end up at the same place. And it’s getting dark. They soon begin to realise someone might be playing games with them. But who?, and, more importantly, why?
As you might have gathered from my opening paragraph, I didn’t exactly have High Hopes for In Fear. Thankfully I was very pleasantly surprised, as even though Jeremy Lovering’s feature début is small-scale and lacking in much plot development, it manages to be a well paced little film that delivers tension in spades. In Fear succeeds where many small cast films fail by featuring two likeable, naturalistic performances from the two lead actors. The idea that they have only known each other a few weeks and don’t totally trust each other quite yet adds subtly to the sense of paranoia which is key to the film’s first half – The idea of being trapped in a car in the dark, lost on a country road with someone who isn’t quite a stranger but isn’t quite a friend is certainly an unnerving one, and Lovering really manages to make it work. Editing, soundtrack and cinematography are all to a high standard, and combine with an excellently foreboding credits sequence to create the palpable sense of dread that the title suggests. Word has it that the director withheld the script from the actors whilst filming, and, if true, that certainly seems to have worked. Of course, halfway through, the film takes a slightly different shape, and one which amps up the tension considerably, ensuring you’ll be on the edge of your seat until the high impact conclusion.
Some people seemed to dislike the film for its relative lack of incident, but if you enjoy a slow creeping thrill on a low budget, then In Fear is definitely the right place to be.
In Fear is available to buy now.