13: Fear Is Real

I don't tend to like most reality shows. I think they're stupid (Flavor of Love, I Love Money) or pointless (Jon and Kate Plus Eight, Keeping Up with the Kardashians). I like horror, and I like a few competition reality shows, so this is right up my alley.

Regarding previous comments about many of the contestants being actors: it doesn't necessarily mean the show is staged. A lot of times, aspiring actors will sign up for a reality show in an attempt to kick-start their career.

I liked watching this show, but it's too bad that a second season won't be coming around. Hopefully it'll be released on DVD or blu-ray eventually.

13 looks like a home video of somebody's Halloween party: a back yard haunt coupled with a club initiation. Apparently none of the contestants has ever been to a Halloween store, so they're reduced to hysteria by things like plastic skulls and voices filtered through one of those you-can-talk-like-a-monster gizmos. Anyone can tell that all reality shows are partly faked up to make events look more interesting than they were (i.e. not at all), but this one has to be the fakest. For instance, we don't see exactly how the contestant "victims" end up in the dire circumstances they're in, but I'm pretty sure a serial torturer/killer didn't jump them, beat and ravish them, and drag them off screaming by the hair, but that the experience was closer to friendly stage hands gently leading them and carefully binding them ("I'm not hurting you, am I?").

I once saw a movie - there are probably several of them - in which a group of people is lured to a remote house and killed off one by one, only to discover (that is, those who are left discover) that they're participating in a reality webcast in which the players get killed. The ads for this show promised something approximating that. "They _think_" so and so, but "what they don't know" is something else. Well, it struck me right off the bat that the idea would only work for a couple of minutes, because as soon as they landed in the middle of the Blair Witch Project then they wouldn't not-know any more, they'd be on to it. But it turns out, predictably, that isn't how it is at all: they know from the outset what they're in for. How specifically they know is a mystery, because the show doesn't let them tell us.

This is TV's second attempt at a serial killer reality show; the first was a pseudo murder mystery. In that one, too, one contestant got "killed" every week. This seems to me a distasteful, and conceivably dangerous, form of role playing, but in any case it's one that can never pan out in practice, for the simple reason that the show can't really kill the contestants, can't even work up to the point of killing the contestants; all it can do is say "She's supposed to be dead now, okay?" If there were a way of getting the victims into position to be killed, leading them believe they would be, and then refraining at the last, then it would be delivering on its promise - but would also be repulsively sadistic, and probably illegal.

Years ago, I was watching a travel show in which a guy was tramping through the Brazilian rain forest or somewhere like it, talking about how frightening it was to be out there all alone, and then haggled with the captain of a steamer to book passage - just him - whereupon my mom, who's more acute than I am, commented, yeah, right, just him and the camera crew. This show is the same. The contestants are all being followed around everywhere they go, so if they're as hysterical as they're behaving, they're the stupidest contestants in reality show history. Actually, hysteria or not, they _are_ the stupidest contestants in reality show history; they make the sex-starved singles on those love-on-a-deserted-island reality shows look like the brain trust. But it's their stupidity that carries the show. They're reacting to provocations geared to about ten-year-olds; the only sensible thing to do with them would be to ignore them - which would mean no show.

The camera-work is atrocious, even allowing for the Blair Witch style: the angles are usually unrevealing, also ugly. The cutting is worse - which goes back to the shooting again; given what was there, the cutting may be a piece of brilliant salvage work. Not one contestant is TV-genic, and not one has anything clever or poignant to say - and that's by the standard of reality shows.

Sam Raimi has his name on this as a producer - I assume for the money. I have an idea: let's tie up him and the other producers and leave _them_ stranded in the woods for a good long time - say, four or five years. That would give them time to meditate on what the makings of a good show would be and to work it out in some detail. Then, when we untied them, all they'd have left to do is make the show - which would be bound to improve on this one by a million times.

Anybody else up for 13: Revenge of the Viewers?

Imo, several actors are in this group of 13, you can see info online of past performance/involvement. Some are already hocking their wares. Those who think they were all regular people, get more reading in. I'd bet contracts were signed. The show had great potential, but it turned into a show to scare the kiddies, and maybe creep out some adults via snakes. So in that regard, it worked. The audience must be considered dummied-down by this show's standards. Too many producer friends stirring the same pot leaves little imagination for change. They need fresh input from someone outside their circle. The editing seemed purposefully vague, the acting was obvious in spots. Take a closer look at Melyssa. She may be more than we know. I think they'll bring it back to finish it up. Why have, two, FIR-MASTERMIND, and FIR posted here if they didn't already film the second? It was less dull in pace than Murder in Small Town X, which got lost and boring in the translation. The endless tumbling around in the dark with flashlights got old real quick, Yawn Factor. And some of the more stupid moves by 'contestants/actors', that was acting, who goes back for underwear? Oh, no don't go back for your underwear, give us a break. I do applaud the production being in Louisiana who is still in dire need of support, and funds. The production gave in that regard. Maybe that's what this show was all about.

When i first watch the show i thought it wouldn't be that good and i was wrong. I'm actually really loving this show right now, i really enjoy the episodes. The execution's are pretty good and same with the things that they have to do in the episode. So its about these 13 people who have to face their deepest fears and the 2 (sometimes 3) people that lose the competitions have to compete in some execution's and the lose gets killed off, and the winner get $66,666. There is also the Death Box that someone can get and they get to become the killer. I think that you should give the show a try and see how you like it. The show airs Wednesdays at 7:00 on CW or you can watch it on CityTv at 8:00 if you do not have cable.

Overall: 8.2/10