Fear Clinic
Director: Robert Hall
(DVD)
D+
If it’s Tuesday, it must be a new straight-to-video horror film starring Robert Englund. In this case, it’s Fear Clinic, born from the short-lived web series of the same name, in which the former Freddy Krueger traded Nightmares for phobias.
Englund reprises his role as Dr. Andover, renegade brain researcher and inventor of a coffin-like machine that animates one’s fears into vivid hallucinations, in hopes of curing his patients of that which frightens them to the point of crippling. This being a horror movie, the contraption doesn’t work as planned. This being from the same creative team as the 2009 series — namely, director/co-writer Robert Hall, the man behind the effective throwback ChromeSkull slashers — it arrives as a missed opportunity and a major disappointment. What worked in episodic bursts does not gel as one shared story, which concerns the struggling survivors of a tragic diner shooting that left several dead, including one child.
In shedding the serial nature of its source material, Fear Clinic the feature loses its base appeal. While it’s not required viewers have the show under their belt before watching the movie, this project does serve as a direct continuation. Yet it doesn’t even follow its own internal logic, so fans may be as lost as newcomers as to just what the hell is going on. I was, and I happily devoured those episodes as they premiered five years prior.
Budgetary issues are apparent, and may be somewhat to blame for the script not being up to snuff. I am assuming that a poor showing in crowdsource funding are why once-attached Kane Hodder and Danielle Harris are no-shows in reviving their series characters; in their place is Slipknot vocalist Corey Taylor — not exactly a fair trade. Casting issues aside, one can’t help but notice how fake the CGI spiders look: so pitiful, the intended scare effect is anything but. Speaking of the arac war, a special effect Hall is able to pull off seems swiped from the Venom portions of Spider-Man 3. Oh, what a tangled web …
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This random movie review escaped from the archives of Flick Attack.
