5.8 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Jack is a highly-strung and over-sensitive artist whose paranoia has reached such heights that he can no longer leave the house without carrying a carving knife just in case someone tries to murder him. When his agent informs him that a Hollywood executive is interested in his latest script, 'Decades of Death', and tells him that he must prepare himself for this important meeting, a string of unlikely events is triggered that leads to Jack being finally forced to face up to all of his worst and wildest fears.
Starring: Simon Pegg, Paul Freeman (I), Clare Higgins (I), Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Elliot GreeneComedy | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 5.0 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
“A Fantastic Fear of Everything” is an acquired taste, submitting such an itchy, darkly comic atmosphere that’s utterly guaranteed to energize those in step with its madness, while others will find the enterprise an overly mannered grind to get through. It’s polarizing work that carries immense creativity and sharp sense of humor, burrowing into the spinning mind of a destructively phobic man during an intense period of suspicion. Thankfully, star Simon Pegg is up for the challenge, bringing to the screen a truly scattered character who’s hilariously bound by his fears, articulated with all the spasms and pauses the actor is particularly skilled at delivering.
The AVC encoded image (1.85:1 aspect ratio) presentation offers terrific sharpness for "A Fantastic Fear of Everything," at its best inspecting set ornamentation and make-up achievements. Jack's apartment alone provides a wealth of textures and oddball sights, offered with precise clarity to aid the viewing experience, and actors retain their various stages of disrepair, showcasing creased facial particulars. Distances are also open for inspection. Colors are bright and bold, offering sickly yellows for interior light sources, and a sustained wash of red for the finale. Delineation remains intact, preserving frame information with shadowy cinematography that favors a lot of dark spaces. Some banding is detected.
The 5.1 DTS-HD MA sound mix also benefits from active filmmaking, finding Jack's strange world of nightmares and phobias superbly detailed on the track. Dialogue exchanges are crisp and tight, handling a wide range of hushed conversations and loud reactions, never slipping into distortive extremes. Accents are sharp, easy to follow. Scoring is supportive and clear, with precise instrumentation, and soundtrack selections are pleasingly loud, commanding scenes with depth and low-end thump. Surrounds are utilized throughout, providing room dimension and emphasizing echoed hypnotic narration, while sound effects move around the room with vigor. Atmospherics are effective, getting a sense of claustrophobia and open city streets.
The second half of "A Fantastic Fear of Everything" takes the action to the dreaded laundromat, where Jack must confront his shattered childhood and deal with deceptively simple washing machine instructions. There's also something of a confirmation of the author's paranoia, leading to an exhausting conclusion with limited comedic value and the booming hair metal sound of Europe. However, there's really no clean way out of "A Fantastic Fear of Everything," which constructs such an intricate web of anxiety, it locks itself into a routine of nervous energy that's better left without a direct conclusion. A happy ending seems false, but there's enough inspired madness flowing around the feature that a little optimism can be forgiven.
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