Fever

I saw this film at the Toronto Film Festival. It blew me away. It's a really detailed examination of paranoia and psychosis - without spoiling the story. I was really impressed with the way the film looked, and the quality of the acting. Alex Winter is from my home town (St. Louis) and I was surprised by how different this film was from his older comedy work. It's a deeply thought-out film, different in a lot of ways from everything else that's out there in the indie scene right now. It takes its subject matter seriously, and doesn't treat the audience like idiots. I had some problems with the pacing of the film - it's slow in some places. And it could have used more of a soundtrack. But it's a really cool movie in spite of its weaknesses. The weird images stayed with me for weeks afterwards. They haunt your dreams.

Winter doesn't seem to have his head around the screenplay for "Fever", a dark and morose drama about a young, disturbed NYC slum dwelling artist (Thomas) who is caught up in a trio of murders . The film paints a portrait so nebulous as to leave many questions unanswered as it plods toward an unsatisfying conclusion with a sort of Hitchcockesque style. Unfortunately we're not given reason to care about the principle and are left to wait for the other shoe to drop all the way to rolling credits. "Fever" is an okay watch technically and artistically which offers solid performances. However, the screenplay misses opportunities to put more meat on the bones of a story with unrealized potential. Okay fodder for couch potatoes into quirky film noir psychodramas.

Fever is a difficult film, and I mean that in a good way. I think the director is creating a story about the raw emotions and desires in a young man caught in the modern world. We follow a painter in New York City who is not able to achieve his goals and dreams, and as a result, escapes into an alternate reality. However, this reality is as much of nightmare as his waking life. If not worse. Like Lynch and Cocteau, Winter forces us into this man's subconcious, and asks us to feel the terror and despair that affects this confused mind. I really enjoyed the trip.

To put it plainly, the movie revolves around this artist, who is so deeply disturbed by the gruesome murders of his landlord and his (landlord's) mother, that he becomes pallid and starts hallucinating. Now, why do the murders have such febrile effects on him and does he actually hallucinate, is where lies the suspense of the movie. Though a fairly simple movie with just a handful of characters, ‘FEVER' can be put under the rubric of scary movies. There is always an air of eeriness throughout the movie, with an abrupt ‘shocking' scene popping up every now and then, with a high potential to chill the bones most of the viewers. Much of the credit for what the movie is, should be given to the acting, mainly of the prime two characters, ‘Nick' and ‘Will', played by Henry Thomas and David O'Hara respectively. While Henry Thomas does a pretty good job of a person ‘spooked' by the murders in the movie, it is David O'Hara, who puts up a splendid performance, by acting as a mentally deranged, ‘psycho' Irishman, who is a sailor, and is a staunch believer of Nazism. The presence of such a character in the movie actually makes it spookier, than it already is. Along with good acting, the direction is pretty decent, too, maintaining just the right amount of the funereal atmosphere throughout, without going overboard with gory details. However, worth mentioning is this particular scene, which can be said as the pivotal scene of the movie, in which ‘Nick' encounters ‘Will', in a train: Though there is very little flaw in the direction in the rest of the movie, this particular scene, especially being a crucial one, is so grossly misdirected, that it ruins the build-up to it. Either this scene should have had more attention paid to the minor details, which are seriously flawed, (and do much damage to it) or else, it could've done without the backdrop of an underground train-ride, and could have done with a much less complicated backdrop.

The movie has all the elements of a spook-thriller, and is scary from the beginning to the end, building up to a good suspense. The overall feel of the movie is also well maintained, without trying to give too much detail to gore, and primarily paying attention to maintain the stolid and chilling atmosphere, in a very subtle manner.

Rating:7/10

To sum-up: Fever is a very dark, shadow-filled look into the formation of emotional disease and discomfort. The acting is very good on Henry Thomas' part as well as the direction by Alex Winter (Bill from the infamous Bill & Ted films) but the storyline has a few out-of-place moments and enough awkwardness to make even the sleepiest of viewers cringe.

Pro's & con's:

+ Henry Thomas' performance (you'll have trouble believing that it's the kid from E.T.)

+ Alex Winter's high quality and sometimes colorful directing style (including some nice, steady camera work which was more fitting for a film like this)

• Very cheap visual effects

• By the time it ends you'll feel like you've wasted your time