VOD Review: Fear Inc. (2016)

"Decent, but flawed."

Be Warned: This review contains spoilers below, so if you want to watch this one unfettered, skip the Quick Word section. And the little blurb right below these very words. Or maybe just the whole thing. If you don't mind spoilers, then read on!

Fear Inc. is one of those Horror Comedies that tries to be meta, and does a pretty good job of it, but it pretty much ruins its own cleverness by trying to be too clever. It tries its best to emulate movies like The Game and April Fool's Day, but it gets lost in trying to pull off one too many reveals, or "Holy shit!" moments, along the way, which I imagine were supposed to keep us guessing.

Abigail Breslin is running for her life through a parking garage, with a masked creep slowly pursuing. She calls someone on her cellphone (turns out to be Fear Inc.), telling them that she wants to stop, as this is all going too far. Believing that she's safe, the the fat kid from The Sandlot shows up pretending to be a security guard, and then she dies painfully.

PRETTY SURE HER ONE SCENE WAS AN AFTERTHOUGHT.

The story moves on to an mentally-challenged dude bro named Joe, who wears a bun in his hair (un-ironically), and has a way-too-hot-for-him girlfriend named Lindsey, who is obviously the adult in the relationship. Joe is a Horror fanatic who is always dragging Lindsey to all sorts of creepy places to get his morbid fix. When the fat kid from The Sandlot show up at the freakshow they're at, offering the services of a mysterious company called Fear Inc., which specializes in scaring people beyond their wildest imaginings, Joe is all for it.

OMG, IT'S HAM!

Of course Fear Inc. ends up being a haven for maniacs who kill people for real, and so Joe, Lindsey, and two of their friends end up fighting for their lives... but wait, here comes a twist... and, oh, another twist... and then... this shit gets too twisty and clever for its own good.

YEAH, HE WEARS A FREDDY SWEATER THROUGH THE WHOLE MOVIE.

Fear Inc. is a pretty good little Horror Comedy that is hindered by two things: the ultra-annoying main character, played by Lucas Neff; and the twist at the end, which was like the 4th twist, and made no sense at all, and kinda killed everything that we had just watched.

Lucas Neff may be a funny actor and all, but his character was so annoying throughout this one, that it took all of 10 minutes for us to wish that he'd be the first to get killed off. His whole over-the-top shtick was not only unfunny as hell, but it was mostly unbearable. Seeing that the movie is basically about him, that's a pretty big issue. It's mostly the writing that's to blame, with the whole "No way man, this is fake!" think going way too far, but it killed a lot the movie's momentum for us. Are we really supposed to believe that a hot chick, who seems to be smart and successful as well, would actually keep this tool around?

And about that last twist... This movie had too many twists to begin with, but we could have lived with the first few had the ending twist not killed everything that the previous ones had achieved. This movie had too many reveals for its own good.

Aside from all of that, Fear Inc. manages to take a fun premise and make something fairly decent with it. The gore gags were cool, even if they were rendered moot by the fact that the movie ended up being very similar to April Fool's Day (1986). If you've seen that movie, then you have a pretty good idea about what Fear Inc. is going for. 

At least Caitlin Stasey was solid (and sexy) as the leading lady here, and she may have had the best comedic timing of all of the cast. It was also cool to see Stephanie Drake in something post Mad Men, too. Duck Phillips even showed up, which gave us double Mad Men nostalgia feels.

YOU DON'T SAY...

A few choice cuts towards the end which were pretty good, especially the part with the arrows.

THAT SCENE WAS GOOD TOO.

No nudity in this one, but Caitlin Stasey was looking damn good in her bikini.

WE LOVE HER.

Fear Inc. was a mostly cool flick that irked the hell out of us, mainly because of the seriously irritating performance/character of Lucas Neff. Caitlin Stasey kept us interested though, and even with the lame duck ending, we liked most of what we saw.

Just know that this is one of those movies that is bound to piss off as many people as it entertains. Or maybe it's just us.

C-

Fear Inc. is available now on VOD.

Caitlin Stasey, Stephanie Drake, and Abigail Breslin should start a company called Boner Inc. I'm copyrighting that.