Fear X

Security guard, Harry Caine (Tutorro) lives a life of lonely obsession after his wife's mysterious shooting at the shopping mall where he works. Unsolved by local Wisconsin police, Harry struggles to piece together information salvaged from surveillance video footage. A dream leads him to discover a photo that begins his search for truth in Montana. Like many psychological thrillers it meanders through themes of schizophrenia and police corruption, but doesn't rise to the excellence of the superior 'Spoorloos' by fellow Danish director, George Sluizer. I soon realised that I had no compassion for Caine or held any emotional attachment to either him or his dead wife. I am certainly not condemning Tutorros' acting; indeed the entire cast did a fine job. The plot just had no substance, no story, no soul. I watched narrative suffer through incoherent changes between dreams, visions and reality. No meaning could be made from feeble attempts at lynchian uniqueness. Kubrick collaborative Larry Smith is Fear X's saviour. Through his creations of unnerving environments we wallow in a visual richness without which would leave the film ineffectual. This utterly pretentious film fails to tell us a story worth listening too. Uncompelled I watched, hopeful that Fear X would recover with a remissive ending. The biggest let down of all being we had to fabricate it ourselves.