It takes some courage (or possibly gall) to make a movie about a new global pandemic in 2023 when COVID-19 is still lurking at the edges waiting to take more lives. Nonetheless, it forms a perfect backdrop for the Houston-based horror film Fear Itself, a tight psychological thriller about lockdown and mental illness that is absolutely riveting.
The film stars James Glen Tucker as Joe, a man living with severe agoraphobia following two near-fatal attacks on him by people he loved. His roommates like him, but he keeps the extent of his illness a secret as he hides in his room and is unable to even take out the garbage.
When news of a second pandemic breaks, this one with a 39 percent fatality rate, his roommates head for a distant cabin to wait it out. Joe, terrified, opts to stay behind. From there, he spends more than a month alone, watching his supplies dwindle and listening to society breakdown outside his walls.
Tucker, who also wrote the script, went to extraordinary lengths to prepare for the role.
“I’m usually not a method actor, but I do have anxiety problems myself,” he said during a phone interview. “I felt like I really needed to feel that to sell those scenes to keep it from being false. Before we started, I left my house as little as possible. I wanted to create the shock to my nervous system whenever I did so that those moments could be real.”
It’s Tucker’s mesmerizing performance that carries the movie and makes it play like a zombie movie without zombies. Plenty of horror films have dealt with isolation. Fear Itself most resembles the societal breakdown seen in George Romero’s classic Night of the Living Dead, as well as more modern takes like Cho Il-hyung’s #Alive. Those films still relied on undead ghouls and traditional scares to keep the pace moving.
Here, there is none of that. Joe’s reasonable terror of a pandemic and subsequent apocalypse are mixed with his phobia. The audience sees only brief glimpses of the outside world, so for all they know Joe is completely justified in his response. The terror is amorphous, huge, nearly cosmic, especially since we all experienced that same fear in microcosm during the outbreak.
“It has that horror aspect where anything could be coming through the doors and the windows,” said director Alvin G. Morris in a phone interview.
While Fear Itself is not really scary all things considered, it is a great study in personal horror. Tucker’s ability to portray a deep dread at something as simple as stepping outside to hand someone a bottle of water adds weight to those moments. It takes what could feel like a weak gimmick and turns it into a powerful struggle.
As for the possibility of another plague, Tucker already had that sense of unease when he wrote the script.
“During COVID, I worked at a Greek restaurant near the Medical Center,” he said. “I would have all these doctors and researchers come by, and they would say that as bad as it was, it could have been so much worse. That stayed with me.”
Fear Itself is very much a Houston story. There’s this amazing scene near the end that will instantly hit home for those who have survived storms in this city. After weeks without power and water pressure, Joe considers ending it all. As he sits despondent on the floor, there is a subtle change in light and sound as the electricity is restored. It’s that gentle hum of the background electronics and the soft glow of table lamps that so many Houstonians have seen as a sign that the danger is over.
Originally in the script, this was supposed to involve an army official showing up to Joe’s door with rations. Instead, Morris went with this simple, universally Houston moment.
“We wanted it to be something so underwhelming,” said Morris. “We’ve all had this happen a thousand times. The lights come back on and you realize that society is going back to normal.”
For a local film shot in eight days on show string budget, Fear Itself delivers quite well. The story is timely, well-told, and deeply unsettling. Most of all, it hits far too close to a terror we have all loved through very recently.
Fear Itself has a red carpet premier at 7 p.m. on Friday, November 3 at Regal Edwards Marq’E, 7600 Katy Freeway. For more information, visit the Event Brite link. $25.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
