Instant Favorite.

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Absolutely Fantastic

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

"Fear" is a sort-of Fatal Attraction type thriller, though is not the classic that Fatal Attraction has become. "Fear", however, is quite effective for what it is and though nothing about it is top-rate as far as a great. Thriller goes, the combined package of what "Fear" offers still grabs hold of you and pulls you in for the ride. Even though this film might be categorized as a guilty pleasure, it still contains excellent early performances by Mark Wahlberg, Reese Witherspoon and a maturing Alyssa Milano. Production value is high, so this is definitely not a B-movie. The well-developed plot is a familiar one - good girl meets great guy who ends up being a psycho. But the lack of originality doesn't take away from the interesting progression of the movie. Directing, editing, writing and acting are still top notch.The plot of this movie was well written and the execution was great. Excellent plot development as Mark Wahlberg's character slowly escalated his aggressive and controlling behavior as opposed to similar movies such as "The Boy Next Door" which the controlling behavior was immediate. That slow progression of control and aggression made it much more realistic, along with the actions taken, In "The Boy Next Door" the ending was very dramatic but unrealistic in this type of character while the ending of Fear was made a lot more sense.Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

This was the first movie I had ever watched with Mark Wahlberg in it and I fell in love!! I absolutely love thrillers, dramas & movies with great acting plus young & hot actors in them!! I've been a huge fan of both Mark Wahlberg & Reese Witherspoon for a very long time. This movie has it all. Lust, forbidden love, obsession, action, mystery, suspense, real-life situations, rebellion, strong emotions that will grip you at times and a plot that will keep you intrigued all the way through to the very end. It's weird to see one of my favorite CSI characters in a movie where he got his start, William Petersen who plays Steve Walker in this movie (played Gill Grissom on CSI). If you haven't seen this movie and are looking for a good thriller/suspense movie to watch from the mid 90's....this is a must watch in my opinion!!

When she and her best friend, Margo, go out to a party one night, Nicole meets mysterious David, who she ends up getting together with. After a couple of weeks, Nicole realises that David is becoming possessive and gets very jealous when she talks to other men. David beats up one of Nicole's male friends because he's seen walking Nicole home. When she ends up breaking up with David, he's not happy, and does everything to try and get her back, when that doesn't work, he and his friends break into Nicole's home.......When this film was first released way back in '96, i thought it was a great thriller. After all, it was the nineties, and we'd been spoilt with these psycho type films earlier on in the decade, and hadn't had a decent one since Unlawful Entry.Well, my movie tastes have diversely changed in nearly twenty years, and I wanted to see if it held up as much as I'd hoped. Well it has, and it hasn't. Wahlberg and Witherspoon are an age away from this, and unfortunately in some scenes, Wahlberg is laughably wooden rather than sinister, his David just isn't edgy as I thought he once was, more autonomous.But it's suitably silly, looks really good, and you could stick a pin in the film the moment when you, Petersen and everyone else knows that David is a bad egg. It's one simple line.'Nicole, get me a coke'Cue the dramatic incidental music, and the look from Petersen, as if to say 'he didn't say please!!!!!! Good heavens Nicole.....Fear for your life!!!!'But, with all these shortcomings, its a lot of fun, Petersen is brilliant as usual, and it gets very Nast in some scenes.If you've seen the majority of these nice people turning psycho movies, then you know what's going to happen, when it's happening, why it's happening, and how it's going to end.And I wouldn't have it any other way....

In 1996, James Foley directed a movie called "Fear." If there is any irony to be found in that title, it may very well be in that Mr. Foley would have had reason to be concerned about his career after making this mindless, overproduced piece of garbage. Five years earlier, now-famous Reese Witherspoon made her debut in a wonderful movie called "The Man in the Moon." In both that film and this one, she played a teenager troubled by her crush on a boy. Except in that much-superior film, it was because her crush was three years older than her and he was smitten by her sister. In this film, it's because he's a sex-addicted psychopath who won't leave her be."Fear" could be described as an adolescent version of "Fatal Attraction." But there is a difference. Up until its last ten minutes, "Fatal Attraction" was a splendid thriller as well as an insightful one. It had a sharp, shrewd knowledge about marital affairs. Hence why Glenn Close still claims to this day that her performance stopped several men from cheating on their wives. That movie did lose its mind in its big climactic ending, but "Fear" is a movie born without a mind. And if you thought the ending to "Fatal Attraction" was ludicrous, wait until you get a load of what happens here.One of the core faults of the picture is lack of a demanding villain. I've had mixed feelings about Mark Wahlberg before, but this could be his worst performance. As the stalking boyfriend with a household of hoods, he's about as frightening as the stone lions in front of a library. There are two sides to Mr. Wahlberg's performance, one worse than the other. When his character goes psychotic at the end, it's just limp ham-acting. But he's worse at the beginning, when he's pretending to be a nice guy just by speaking softly and hanging his eyelids as if he had insomnia. But I guess Mr. Wahlberg, who can act when given a worthy screenplay, cannot be fully blamed here. For I doubt this material could have been handled well by any actor, young or old. Because I was not the least bit intimidated or frightened by him, I saw no reason why Miss Witherspoon, or her parents or friends, would be, either.However, the worst sin the movie commits is insincerity. It is tackling a very topical and relevant collection of subject matter: underage sex, early-age affection, the tough times between parents and children at that crucial age of sixteen. But instead of offering insight about these tough times--that everyone of us can relate to in one way or another--it just pushes those opportunities aside in favor of over-the-top exploitation. Take, for example, the denouement of the picture. Instead of going for a plausible conclusion, the movie goes into a cheesy monster-on-the-loose formula, which very well have been a parody of "Night of the Living Dead." This is the sort of film where four teenage boys have been granted special powers like second lives and super-human strength. They apparently also become master electricians and know more about architecture than the designer of a maximum security system. How do they acquire this vast array of skills? By doing drugs, raping high school girls, and playing lots of pool. I don't buy it.The movie is so unconsciously bad that it is always racing ahead of itself. Even a scene such as a jogger running through some woods (not chased by a bad guy, by the way) is accompanied by whooshing camera motions and a soundtrack so noisy that it would make the world's most obnoxious rock band ask for a little quiet time. I suppose if there was any good intentions from the makers of the movie, it would have been along the lines of Larry Clark's "Kids" released a year before. But whereas that film had a purpose, "Fear" just pretends to have a purpose.