"In Sickness and in Health"
The first suspense (as opposed to supernatural horror) episode of
Fear Itself proves to be a disappointment, and I suspect most of the blame this time lies with the direction, rather than with the script. Not that the very guessable "twist" ending scriptwriter Victor Salva (
Jeepers Creepers) offers helps matters, but the uneven tone, utter lack of subtlety, and clumsy pacing of the episode, directed by John Landis, killed it much more efficiently than our drama's serial killers could hope to snuff any victim.
A bride (Maggie Lawson, most visible of late in
Psych) is joking with her maids of honor as they prepare for the ceremony. As one bridesmaid goes to check on the groom, she remembers to pass along an envelope the officiating priest had given her, which he'd received from an unidentified woman. The typewritten note in the sealed envelope says only "The person you are about to marry is a serial killer." This disturbs the bride, but only slightly; she goes to the groom (James Roday, also of
Psych) and has a playful moment with him, then returns to her dressing room, her anxiety not completely allayed. She doesn't tell her friends what the note says, but lets them know, indirectly, that it's not good news. She quizzes the priest, played as gamely as possible here by William B. Davis (most famous as the "Cigaret-Smoking Man" on
The X-Files), as a nearly deaf, well-meaning, yet sometimes almost sinister fellow, who won't quite tell her about the deaths of her fiance's parents. After the ceremony, she speaks with the groom's uncle, one of a pair of identical twins (for no compelling reason, except perhaps in hopes of suggesting the multiple faces people can display, or just to add another layer of uncertainty to everything...however, little is made of this); the uncle lets the new wife know her husband spent some time in a mental hospital of some sort after the parents' utterly mysterious disappearance. Increasingly agitated, and without enough motivation to make it convincing, the new husband becomes visibly hostile to his wife, resentful that her brother, who opposed the sudden marriage after a quick courtship, refused to attend, and not happy that one of the bridesmaids had confronted him about the note. After some attempts by the bride to catch up with the mystery woman who'd given the priest the note, and a despondent phone call to the absent brother, the wife is pursued around the church by her husband, who traps her in a confessional. He then confesses from the other side of the booth that he'd recently had dinner with another woman while his fiancee was away, and guiltily assumes that this woman, who was taken with him to the point of having stalked him, was crazily attempting to cast a pall over the wedding by leaving a note about their evening. Meanwhile, we follow the mystery woman back to her house, which has at least one room filled with body-part trophies from murder victims, where she is revealed to be, to very little if any surprise, the bride's brother. The wife reveals that the note was meant for her new husband rather than for her, and she wonders if her spouse can handle not knowing what the note says. Meanwhile, the brother listens to the phone message his sister had left, wherein her suggestion she might be back at the family house tonight becomes threat to her meddling brother, who now has been clearly afraid of losing his partner in crime, rather than a desperate plea for help. Back in the church, the husband suggests that his new wife can tell him about the note when she's ready, and she assures him she will.
Unfortunately, any suspense this episode attempts to gin up, almost successfully in the church pursuit sequence, is usually undermined by Landis's attempts to be funny...rather than intensifying the audience's sense of the danger for our characters, the jokey bits tend to just stop things dead (it doesn't help that, with the mild exception of some of the women's banter at the beginning of the episode, that the humorous bits aren't funny). But Landis sure does milk the images of the icon statues around the church for whatever spookiness he can...the statues get more screentime than some of the actors with speaking roles. My housemate, walking by and catching a few minutes of the opening segment, asked if what I was watching was actually
Fear Itself; assured that it was, she said it reminded her more of a Lifetime cable made-for-TV movie...and, except for the weak twist ending, it did resemble far too many of the video gothics (in the 1970s dangerous-romance novel sense) that station runs more than anything like a successful thriller. Even with a few nicely-composed shots; the series continues to be admirably well-produced on what's surely a modest to medium budget.
A pity. I strongly suspect next week's episode will be better, but the batting average so far is not encouraging.
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