On this fine Monday morning, it only makes sense to talk about one thing, and that’s sheer, horrible suffering.
By which I mean the 2013 British psychological horror movie, In Fear. Directed by Jeremy Lovering (and drawing influence from the excellent webseries No Through Road, which is also well worth a watch), In Fear is up there with some of the best (worst?) examples of profoundly discomforting horror from the European canon.
Following a young couple just a few weeks into their new relationship (played by Alice Englert and Ian De Caestecker), In Fear tracks the hapless duo as they drive out to a secluded Irish stopover on the way to a festival, only to be pursued by a local who seems to have some kind of command over the geography of the area (Allen Leech), leading to a gruesomely grotesque endgame.
I know I’m always banging on about how much I love small-town horror, but God, I really do, and Lovering clearly knows what he’s doing with this setting: the uneasy confrontation between the couple and some locals at the pub at the movie’s opening captures the flipside of that cosy rural comfort, the prickly edge that snags outsiders if they’re not careful enough. Those endless, looping backroads have a hellacious, insurmountable quality to them, blurring the lines between the supernatural and the just plain psychological horror as the couple do their best to escape their vehicular attacker.
Horror based around vehicles is scant, and good examples of it even scanter, but In Fear really makes use of the car interior as an intense setting for this tight triple-hander. A car is both enclosed and exposed, a safe haven and a cage and a weapon all in one, and I love the way Lovering plays with those contradictions over the course of the film. With such a limited cast, everyone needs to be turning in their best, and they really do – Leech genuinely makes my skin crawl a little bit, and Englert has since gone on to have a well-deserved impressive career in her own right. Lovering withheld much of the plot details from the main cast to get a more genuine reaction from them in the moment, and I think it really lends the movie an organic franticness and desperation that builds the atmosphere beautifully.
And, look, the climax of this film, the murder, is one of the most memorably horrible things I’ve seen in a long time. I don’t want to ruin it here, because it’s such a great reveal. It’s one of those deaths that’s totally, utterly mean, unfair to the very Nth degree, but totally fitting with the tone of the movie and the brutality of this villain. It truly made my stomach turn, not for the gore, but for the horror of it – for the implication of it. It’s brilliant in its brutality and simplicity, it makes perfect sense and is a total shock at the same time.
In Fear is a truly fantastic little horror, if you’re looking for something to sincerely fuck you up (or, at least, that’s what it did to me). Have you seen it? What do you think of In Fear? Are there any other vehicular horror movies you love? Let me know in the comments!
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By Lou MacGregor
(header image via Roger Ebert)
No But Listen 