Fear X (2003)

Fear X (PG-13) - Review

"X marks the Spot"

Danish Director Nicolas Winding Refn's (Drive) first foray into American cinema was the 2003 mystery film Fear X, a brooding yet unsatisfying tale of obsession and blood told with a truly terse style and steady hand yet rejected by the majority of the public as it showcased two of Refn's favorite genres, surrealism and the art house film's nihilism towards standard plotting.

Leading the cast is the ramrod mall cop Harry (John Turtorro), who's wife murder he is slavishly investigating.  Harry watches the surveillance tapes obsessively, looking for every possible clue in the low-resolution vhs dubs, scans the halls of commerce for familiar faces and motivations, and ultimately leads him (maybe) to the conspiracy of his wife's death.  The overwhelming sense of dread and discovery to the film is wonderful, tracking Harry through this adventure is a nail pulling experience, and many who lived through that tale are put off by its art-house vagueness of its ending, where it is up to the home viewer to decide what happened and why.  It does come as a shock since much of it's first hour is delivered as a fairly standard detective story, but the severe surrealism, dream sequences and shock lighting schemes should serve as a clue to it's eventual arty crash of traditional narrative.

Showing signs of the genius and unconventional voice of Refn's style (X is an obvious precursor to his later Only God Forgives, both in construction and audience acceptance), the director borrows liberally from Kubrick's The Shining and Lynch's Blue Velvet mixed with Coen's Fargo to carve out his own niche in film oddities for his US debut.  It works, it gets under your skin and rattles your cage, but perhaps it being neutered with a lukewarm PG-13 and a unnaturally vague ending (further frustrating the viewer is that the surrounding characters are discussing what happened and what it means and yet we cannot hear them), Fear X is more of a film-theory than a full-fledged film experiment.  Results will vary, but the side effects may be worth it.

6 "Undecipherable visual montages to transition your film ending are soooo 2001:ASO, Refn" out of 10 (GOOD)