| "The searching-out and thorough investigation of truth ought to be the primary study of man." - CiceroDirector Nicolas Refn's first English language film, "Fear X" is an intermittently interesting psychological thriller which stars actor John Turturro as a lowly security guard struggling to cope with the murder of his wife. The film adopts a muted tone, observing from a distance as a grieving Turturro devotes his entire life to finding his wife's killer. But as Turturro scours security footage, interviews suspects and tracks down leads, it becomes increasingly <more> apparent that Refn is uninterested in conventional "mystery movie" dynamics. Instead, Refn turns Turturro's quest into something more existential; man's inability to recover the past, to fully know another human being, to ever map all mysteries and to ever know the full, unvarnished truth. Turturro's therefore on an ontological mission, but reality never becomes clearer to him. What's thus most interesting about "Fear X" literally, "Fear What?", a fear of the unknown is the way clues and characters are stumbled upon which may or may not be clues, and who may or may not be relevant characters. By the film's end you are given enough material to piece together at least three possibilities regarding the disappearance of Turturro's wife, but the truth remains tantalizingly obscured. Most criticise "Fear X" for its "open ending", but there's nothing wrong with ambiguity. Ignoring the fact that Refn's ending isn't as ambiguous as it is made out to be Turturro's wife was the victim of, take your pick: misidentification, revenge, random chance, or a scorned secret lover , the real problem is that, though the film features some brilliant sequences, by its second half "Fear X" begins to feel derivative of more well known films. For example, Refn's shots of Turturro rummaging through security footage recall Antonioni's own ontological mystery movie, "Blow Up", which featured another confused hero fumbling through image banks. "Fear X" also recalls De Palma's "Blow Out", itself a homage of "Blow Up", whilst Refn's gracefully shot "mall sequences" recall the gliding cameras and prowled malls of De Palma's "Body Double". Later, unsettling shots of hotels and elevators recall "Barton Fink" again with Turturro and "The Shining", whilst the film's plot recalls "The Pledge", "Session 9", "Birth" and Dumont's "Humanity". "Fear X's" tone also strongly resembles both that of Kubrick's filmography, and modern Kubrick imitators Dumont, Haneke, Antonio Campos . The film simply isn't as esoteric as it pretends to be. Still, films like "Fear X" are rare, and it does enough things right to forgive its weak climax and cribbed style. 8/10 – Worth one viewing. <less> |
