Fear Pharm (Horror Movie Review)

PLOT: A foursome of fun-loving teenagers frequent a massive corn-field maze Halloween haunt, where they are stalked and slashed by a sinister staff of psychotic serial killers.

REVIEW: DP-turned-director Dante Yore tills overly familiar territory with his scant and skimpy debut feature, FEAR PHARM (WATCH IT HERE / OWN IT HERE), a cheaply made slasher film that squanders its atmospheric real-life locale by boasting some pretty dubious acting performances, a raft of poorly rendered CG gore, obnoxious protagonists we hope to die sooner than later, and a glaringly level of subpar technical craftsmanship. Now, I’m admittedly the easiest mark when it comes to a slasher film, as I require nothing more than a collection of dimwitted characters, usually more unlikable than their assailant (save for a compelling Final Girl), to be systematically stalked and slaughtered in mildly inventive ways. That’s it. I usually require little else to enjoy such dumb derivative dreck. I need no complex back-stories or complicated characters studies, but I do require a modicum of verisimilitude in order to believe, however nihilistically, what is shown on screen. However, while FEAR PHARM presents us with gormless leads that we do indeed long to see suffer a protractedly painful demise, the modalities of death leave a lot to be desired. With a stench of rank amateurism across the board, FEAR PHARM is an ersatz slasher outing that makes you long for the movies it blatantly apes.

One of the things I did admire about the film is the fun-loving tone it establishes early on as we meet a foursome of juveniles – cheerleader Wendy (Emily Sweet), Gothic hipster Melanie (Tiana Tuttle), Abercrombie model Brandon (Houston Stevenson), and low-rent Steve Stifler Rustin (Chris Leary) – as they plan a weekend trip to nearby Halloween-haunt cornfield-maze. However, Rustin soon wears out his welcome as an annoying motor-mouth who’s neither funny nor insightful with anything he says. Still, as grating as Rustin is from the jump, I like the attempt to keep the tone light and airy and not too serious. After making plans, the foursome heads out to what we’re told is a 100-acre corn-maze Halloween attraction. In reality, the film was shot on location at the Cool Pumpkin Patch in California, home of the country’s largest Corn Maze (more than 60 acres). The locale offers instant production value and is quite possibly the best thing the movie has going for it. Sure there is way too much birdseye drone-shot footage of the area, but at least we know the place is real, lived in, and not at all manufactured, thereby fostering a semblance of credibility.

The foursome meets Hershel (John Littlefield), the maze manager who offers them a chance to win $10,000 if they can complete the VIP maze in less than one hour ($5,000 if they make it in less than two hours). When the quartet is given four paths to take, they decide to split up so one person takes each path, thereby increasing their odds of winning. Here’s where the movie fails to capitalize on a decently laid out premise. As we follow each character one by one on their respective path, the film almost plays as a series of intercut vignettes. The problem is, each path taken by the characters feel too similar, essentially ambling down the same path cut through a windrow of corn. Had Yore aesthetically designed each path to be wildly different within the large maze structure, the movie would be infinitely more engaging and unpredictable. As it is, the only thing differentiating each path is the killer assigned to each, all of them far too redolent of horror movie villains we’ve grown accustomed to for decades.

For instance, Brandon is stalked by Gemma (Aimee Stolte), a sexy go-go dancer type akin to homicidal Harley Quinn. Melanie is accosted by a masked-up, chainsaw-wielding Leatherface wannabe, while Wendy is pursued by a creepy-clown with balefully bad intentions. Rustin, meanwhile, is tormented by a sinister scarecrow as he blissfully dawdles down his cornrow path as if there wasn’t a worry in the world. At just 74-minutes, these pale parts of the poor sum total feel far too derivative for a true slasher fan to get excited about. The movie does nothing to push the subgenre forward, nor is it a well-crafted or scary enough homage to the halcyon-day slasher movies many of us grew up loving to warrant sitting through. It’s a shame really, since the location could have provided for a legitimately terrifying horror movie setting. And then of course is the issue of the title, which kept me expecting the film to arrive at some sort of subplot involving a contaminated PH level in the cornfield water supply or some sort of pharmaceutical subplot. Alas, FEAR PHARM is named so for no apparent reason whatsoever. Unfortunately, the same can probably be said about the movie's mere existence.