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| A Fantastic Fear of Everything played Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2012 |
Check out T-Mak World‘s full Toronto After Dark Film Festival (TAD) coverage and reviews here.
Oct 27 2012 – “Completely schizophrenic film in which Simon Pegg steals the performance from himself” are words director Crispian Mills used to set up the film before it’s screening. This is Mills’s directorial debut and if the name sounds slightly familiar it’s probably from his musical background. Mills was (is?) the front man of the very successful mid-late 90’s Brit rock band Kula Shaker who had a string of top 10 hits. Of interest is that this movie was shot in 28 days.
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| A Fantastic Fear of Everything played Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2012 |
The film starts with a very cool sweep of London during the opening credits giving it a Gotham City look. We focus in on “Hackney, East End” and in a monologue we are told this is the story of Jack who is afraid of everything. Jack of course is played by the remarkable Simon Pegg who was able to fit in this indie film with his major shoots (such as LA Noir and Star Trek). Jack is writing a TV Series about serial killers named “Decades of Death” and the current project has instilled a very serious fear of being murdered. He is paranoid to the comical extreme and only takes solace in the confines of his flat. The story rewinds a bit to a meeting with Jack and his literary agent and we find out he was a children’s book author who was going mad and also had for lack of a better term psychedelic acid dreams (involving a big cyclops eyeball).
The movie works quite well because of it’s “Britishness” – the script is mostly monologue in which Pegg either talks out loud or in his mind. The movie is purely a comedy and one scene in which Pegg is trying to build his confidence by doing a gangsta rap in his bedroom to himself with a cleaver crazy glued to his hand. Words can’t do justice to the hilarity in this scene.
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| A Fantastic Fear of Everything played Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2012 |
The movie is basically split into two scenes – the first part is in the solitary confines of Jack’s flat (in which he has to face his fear of serial killers) and the second part is in the laundromat (in which he has to face his fear of laundromats (?)). Finally, at the end of the movie we go on a psychedelic animation trip featuring two hedgehogs in a forest with lots of mushrooms around.
The more I write about this movie, the more ludicrous it seems trying to describe it, and as such I will stop attempting to
Verdict: 4 out of 5. Pegg delivers a top notch performance as the comically paranoid children’s book author turned to serial killer TV script author. His fears of serial killers is only topped by his fear of laundromats. Insanely hilarious psychedelic trip into the mind of a dude who has a fantastic fear of everything.
