Fear PHarm

Fear Pharm (2020) is a movie that I recently watched on Amazon Prime. The storyline follows a group of teenagers who are coaxed into attending a local Fear Farm in town. It is a unique haunted attraction to make it feel more realistic. It ends up being more real than the teenagers could have imagined.

This movie is directed by Dante Yore (616 Wilford Lane) and stars Tiana Tuttle (Still), John Littlefield (Hulk), Aimee Stolte (Megalodon) and Emily Sweet (Castle Freak).

This has a lot of scenes I thought were well done, enough to recommend seeing it once. The movie is definitely uneven. It felt like the villains were better cast than the victims. The dialogue is a bit inconsistent with some good comedy mixed in. There's time you can't tell if it's bad acting or poorly written dialogue. The horror elements are well done and contain solid gore. There's a skinning scene I thought was well executed and a sequence that had a good use of arrows. Some very entertaining stuff.

Overall, this movie has it flaws but enough worthwhile horror elements that make it a must see for fans of the genre. I would score this a 6/10 and strongly recommend it.

It was fun and the premise was fantastic. I've seen a ton of horror films and I've never seen this idea. Was the budget low? Probably. But the fact they did something different is aspiring. Also, never did I once wince at the acting, it was way better than 99.9% of your low budget independent horror films. By far, in my opinion.

FEAR PHARM (2020) is ostensibly just another Texas-chainsaw-massacre-themed slasher with a dash of jokes on top of a helping of gore.

Four friends are selected for a VIP corn maze and offered a cash prize if they can traverse it in under two hours. Naturally, they discover along the way that the horror characters they encounter are not "just" trying to scare them.

It turns out that the villains actually have a motivation beyond pure bloodlust which brings the movie's title full circle, and it is always a delight to see that at least some thought went into formulating a movie's concept. The ending scene is a wonderful exercise in black humor.

Though the film is decently shot, some directorial choices bring it down, unfortunately. Chief among these, in my opinion, is the prologue. It is not only unnecessary but actually counterproductive. It shows that the villains really are murderous, and thereby destroys any plausible deniability that could have been sustained in the first act of the film by its light-hearted tone and especially the funny "business meeting" introduction of the family. Had we found out that these guys really mean business only once they started hurting our group, it would have been that much more shocking.

Other unwise choices in my opinion were the repetitive panning shots over the corn maze that cheapened the movie's feel, the curious cut-aways during actual gore scenes (was this because of the MPAA?) and some implausible sequences, such as a character whose arm was just amputated reviewing his acting as if nothing was literally amiss.

Also, while there is a colorful band of villains, only some of them are really fleshed out. I had trouble distinguishing between a couple of them.

I think with a few different choices, a better fleshed-out characterization of each member of this family and a tad more creative gore scenes, this could have been a good horror movie. It just missed the mark.

The beauty of the slasher subgenre is that they don't always have to be good movies to be great movies. Performances can be hokey, FX can be cheap and silly, the plot can be ridiculous, and it all still adds up to a great viewing experience. Well-executed slashers and the ones that wildly miss the mark can be just as entertaining as the other.

With an "intense" Texas Chainsaw style poster, where does Fear Pharm land? The poster is and isn't a mislead. The movie IS about a strange family that is hunting and abducting teens for their own twisted reason. The movie isn't nearly as intense as the best Texas Chainsaw movies, and it does try to be a bit lighter and intentionally add some comic elements. Nowhere near the pitch-black comedy of Tobe Hooper's original or the OTT style of its sequel though. For me the humour didn't land. This is mostly since it makes the cardinal slasher sin of all the main group of teens being obnoxious. They also make several "meta" horror movies references in their early interactions ("Are we done with the expositional dialogue?") which makes sense in a Scream movie or Cabin In The Woods because it's part of the larger story. Here it is because one of the teens is an actor for some reason. A role that serves no further function in the plot. It's difficult to have fun with characters when they are so unlikable.

There's a similar problem when it comes to the villainous family. With the Sawyers from Texas Chainsaw or the Firefly clan from House of 1000 Corpses, the audience could delight in how wonderfully depraved these people are. Apart from their costumes there is nothing particularly interesting about the Fear Pharm family, and at times I found myself wishing I was having as much fun watching as the actors clearly were playing their roles.

Fear Pharm does get down to business quickly, opening with the traditional slasher tropes of gore and nudity and there's a fun but very brief sequence (the only highlight for me) involving a cheerleader being chased through a corn field by two clowns in an ice-cream truck with a harpoon gun! I wish the rest of the movie was as insane as the end of that sentence. And that's the problem. Fear Pharm is not an extremely well-executed slasher, nor is it bonkers and wild enough to still be a really good time. Sadly, my worst fear was realised with this one. That I'm watching a movie from my most beloved sub-genre that I can't recommend.

• DREW

@WatchItWombat.

All the bad reviews are just people that have nothing better to do but sit around all day on their cloud of judgment eating hot pockets and thinking they are Siskile n Eibert. Stop being so close minded. I think the movie accomplished exactly what it intended. It was funny and a little quirky and a great halloween season movie with just the right amt of gore and decent back story. Get off your high horses dorks and go back to playing mindcraft!