Phobias: O Que Você Mais Teme?

I had no idea this was an anthology and was disappointed when I found out. The reason for that is that the opening Asian-American storyline is pretty decent, but then it suddenly finishes unfinished and we move onto increasingly less elaborate and engaging tales. Most dwell on predictable violence and shock scares, and the wraparound story goes nowhere either.

I was pretty excited when I heard this movie was coming out. I loved Alexis Knapp and Hanna Lee in the Pitch Perfect movies. And Leonardo Nam wasn't bad in the Sisterhood of traveling pants movies. I even sought it out when I saw it was released. However, I have to say they wasted these actors on what feels like an unfinished script. If you have seen the MASH episode Dreams, this basically a movie version of that episode as 5 different characters have their worst fears realized in their dreams. The only real difference is in this film is we find out that the government is making the characters have their bad dreams. And while this has potential, the movie never really engaged me. I won't spoil anything, but I was very underwhelmed by it all. The acting wasn't great, and I have a hard time finding most of the dreams believable. For instance, who is scared of middle school kids?

Additionally, Alexis Knapp is barely in the movie! They did her dirty by making her part so small :(. Also, the writing is terrible, and the ending is so sloppy you would think a middle school kid came up with it. Now I don't want to be too harsh because there is a chance this movie's filming got cut short due to Covid-19 because it was really short, and another 30 minutes would've really helped it tell a complete story. But with that said, I feel like they really needed to do some rewrites before publishing this movie because it feels like only half a movie.

Split into five sections, with a central narrative tying them together, this film feels a tad disjointed. Each section has a separate director... and each is named after a specific phobia. "Robophobia" & "Hoplophobia" are the two best sections. The others leave room for improvement. Camilla Belle, makes her directorial debut with the latter of those two... and she shows assured cinematic control and storytelling. Other than that, this is really worth skipping.

A shockingly bad waste of an hour and a quarter. This movie is literally about nothing. There is no plot, almost no acting, very limited lighting (bad movies are better when you can't see them, so I guess this is a plus). Seriously, I wrote more coherent stories in pre-K with crayons.

I don't know who this film might appeal to.

It's shares DNA with Creepshow and shows no real improvement on that film, despite decades separating them. Some of the cinematography is ok (particularly in the first section) but that is no reason to watch it,

Acting is poor to bad, script is generally poor, stories are poorly developed and don't connect. There is no phobia in any of the stories (in case that's what you wanted). It's rare for me to have nothing good to say about a film.

I write this review for those who, like me, are struggling to find something to watch in 2021 and feel this might be worth a try. It's not. Best avoided.