A Problem with Fear

Gary Burns likes to be cool. His movies are cool. "waydowntown" was really cool. "A Problem With Fear" is not cool.

"A Problem With Fear" has a great premise, is well acted and (sometimes) well shot. The problem is it just does not work for 90 mins. It could have if the director gave us more plot and less cool. Instead of giving a little more exposition and back round, Gary Burns decided to populate his movie with lots of subplots and shots of naked women running across the street. I'm sure it all means something...something really cool.

"A Problem With Fear" is set (I think) in the "Not So Distant Future" where one company is trying to cause the stock market to crash by sort of 'V' chipping the city into a "Fear Storm" (this happens by having the most phobic person on the planet send telepathic waves of fear which manifest into real tragedies: escalator deaths, elevator deaths, traffic deaths...) Make sense? No? Well that's okay neither does the movie.

"A Problem With Fear" is just too busy being a satire to really get a grasp on what it's satirizing: Corporate fear mongering for profit (Code Yellow anyone?). If Gary Burns had spent a little more time with plot points and character arcs and a little less time on glib hipster-mall -culture wit he might have made a movie worth thinking about. As it stands now this film is just a wannabe Lynchian fable. Sorry but the naked woman running in slow motion, for no reason, isn't symbolic...it's dumb. I don't know, maybe I'm just not hip enough to get it.

Gary Burns should keep doing what he's doing, eventually he'll make a REALLY COOL Movie. As it stands "A Problem With Fear" should have been a really cool short film.

I had high hopes for A PROBLEM WITH FEAR as it began started to roll last week on Reel 13 (I know, I know, I'm getting behind on the blogs – I have more of a life now…). The film, yet another Canadian entry, looks really strong with an evocative, crisp color palette. It seemed like it was going to be a suspenseful, Hitchcockian thriller. It didn't take long, however, for me to realize that my expectations were not going to be filled. A Problem with Fear turned out to be mocking Hitchcock films (as opposed to lampooning them the way Mel Brooks did in HIGH ANXIETY) and was instead a twisted comedy that unfortunately, wasn't even very funny.

The film should really be called "A Problem with Tone". Bizarre choices are made throughout the piece, all of which seem to adversely affect the tonality issue. I have no doubt, at this point, that the film wanted to be a comedy, but it certainly took itself awfully seriously at times. In a way, the richness of the imagery and the strength of the production design belied the ostensibly intentional silliness of the narrative. Additionally, director Gary Burns overused a fog filter-type device that he placed over each side of the frame to give a feeling of disorientation. Instead, it detracts from the comedy element and it's not interesting enough to be effective from a dramatic point of view. It's more of a nuisance than anything else.

Speaking of nuisances, another weird aspect to the film was the characterization of the girlfriend, Dot. I'll admit that Emily Hampshire impressed me with her ability to create a complete, believable, three-dimensional character, but somewhere along the line, someone might have realized that the character's annoying qualities would get to be, well, annoying. She made the interesting choices of giving the character – the leading lady – a lisp, braces, an oddball sense of fashion and a bad, selfish attitude. Unusual, out-of-the-box thinking? For sure. Serving the betterment of the film? Not so much. Meanwhile, the gorgeous female of the film (Camille Sullivan, who's also quite good) actually turns out to be the older sister of the hunky leading man (Paolo Costanzo) and it seems that she, apparently in her late 20's, runs a huge corporation that is responsible for everyone's fears coming true. If that sounds ridiculous, that's because it is.

The film's supporters would probably suggest that I missed the point of the film, but the social commentary about the commercialization of fear was not lost on me. I just don't think that justifies the consistently poor choices made throughout the film. Just because a film has a message, in whatever style it chooses to deliver that message, doesn't mean the film is any good. And A PROBLEM WITH FEAR just isn't.

(For more information on this or any other Reel 13 film, check out their website at www.reel13.org)

Wow. Haven't seen something this poorly written and conceived for a while. How did it get funding from all those participants listed in the credits? CHUM...Telefilm Canada...Movie Central... They must be embarrassed now.

This was a 5 minute concept dragged out into 100 minutes or so that felt like 3 hours or so. There were some good actors in this film, but there wasn't any good acting. The characters were shallow and boring. The project badly needed an editor who could trim about 30 minutes of non-communicative reactions shots of actors with no emotion (who obviously don't understand or care about the characters they are playing). The whole film felt very amatuerish all round, like super 8 films I used to see in high school. This film was completely lacking in any coherent direction or compelling plot. Any one of the main characters could have died or disappeared at any point in the film and I wouldn't have cared. Their problems were silly and juvenile (as was the script)so there was no chance of having any kind of emotional involvement in their "predicaments". I can't even begin to describe how stupid it was, except to say that it felt like it was conceived, written and directed by a couple of puerile high school students who drink too much beer and think everything is funny. However, if you haven't partaken in the case of beer...and you've matured since then..it all looks very childish.

Avoid this film.

"Rest assured, I was on the Internet in minutes, registering my disgust throughout the world." -- The Comic Book Guy (The Simpsons)

This is all that could come to mind as I finished this movie. He should have left the beatnick ugly girl for the hot one because she obviously had a thing for him. The entire evil subplot is left unexplained and doesn't make any sense at all. Honestly, I've seen porn with better plots.

The production on this movie looks like it was done by a child. There are lots of BLURRY PANIC ATTACKS to keep you on the edge of your seat. It's like this producer guy just got his new effects program and wants to show everyone this cool blur effect. The soundtrack leaves something to be desired.

And what's with those sideburns, protagonist whose name I can't remember because your character was so thin?

I'm surprised by the lack of enthusiasm that has greeted Gary Burns' fourth feature, A PROBLEM WITH FEAR. Reminiscent of his previous film, WAYDOWNTOWN, FEAR utilizes the insular setting of Calgary's enormous shopping mall and urban life. With an absurdist tone, and hilarious dialogue, Burns examines the culture of fear in which we live. The story is well-constructed, building around Laurie's whose many fears are starting to happen to people around him. FEAR explores similar ground to that which Michael Moore did in BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, but with a sharp, fantastic story. And once again, as in WAYDOWNTOWN, Burns wraps his story up with a surprisingly touching finale.