Movie Review: Fear (1990)

A young woman sits in a chair. Nervous. Anxious. Twitching with discomfort. Police officers surround her, shooting questions at her. She's a psychic, trailing a serial killer and his next potential victim in her head. She digs for details--something, anything that will tell the police where the killer is, where he's going, what he's doing--but comes up with only trivial bits of information, like the tune the man is humming or the fact that his car radio is broken. Her anxiety increases. The lead detective, an older man with a patch over one eye and a heavy drawl, presses for more details. The suspect passes a police car before pulling off the road and dragging a young girl to a barn full of sharp, shiny tools and implements. Just as the killer is about to claim another victim, the police burst in, weapons drawn, shouting commands, opening fire.

These are the opening moments from Fear, an underrated thriller that looks like it was meant for theatrical release but instead wound up premiering on cable. Ally Sheedy plays the young psychic, who has only a tenuous grip on her abilities but nonetheless uses them to help police track serial killers like the "gentleman" in the opening scenes (played by, of all people, 1950s horror star John Agar).

Years later, after she's become famous for her abilities and has written three books about the cases she's helped solve, she becomes involved in a new case: A killer nicknamed "The Shadow Man" is stalking the Los Angeles area, seemingly murdering at random and writing "Fear Me" on walls (in blood, of course).

There's only one problem, though: The killer is psychic, too. He gets off on offing people using their greatest fears--stabbing, torture, suffocation etc. When he realizes that Sheedy is tracking him, she turns her own abilities against her, bringing her along mentally on his killing spree and REALLY getting off on her fear.

Writer/director Rockne O'Bannon keeps the tension high throughout the proceedings, while Sheedy plays the psychic as shy and terrified by being attacked in her own noggin, but ultimately strong and smart enough to confront the killer. The impressive supporting cast helps as well, with Lauren Hutton as Sheedy's literary agent, Michael O'Keefe as a helpful, handsome neighbor, Stan Shaw as a cop and Pruitt Taylor Vince (he of the perpetually twitching eyes) as "The Shadow Man." There's even a score by Henry Mancini.

The ending is disappointing, though, with a confrontation in a hall of mirrors (done earlier and better in such classics as Lady from Shanghai and Enter the Dragon) and an entirely improbable fight scene on a Ferris wheel. Still, there's more than enough that's fresh in Fear to distinguish it from the raging horde of serial-killer movies that continues to overrun the horror film genre to this very day.