Fear Clinic (2014)

Directed By Robert Hall
Starring Robert Englund, Fiona Dourif and Corey Taylor
95 Minutes
USA

Fear Clinic is a film that’s based on a web series that I’ve never seen. I didn’t give much thought to this fact when I glanced over it on the back of the DVD box, but within the first few minutes of the movie it became obvious that it was important. The movie begins with Robert Englund relaying backstory to us in voice-over over the opening credits, while footage and stills are shown to illustrate. This caught me off guard and I soon felt myself gasping for air, struggling to take in so much exposition at once. So like Englund, I’ll attempt to bring you up to speed. Fear Clinic has a high concept, and an interesting one at that. Englund is Dr.Andover (and over, and over, and over etc.), who has invented a device called the Fear Chamber, which in theory is supposed to cure people of their crippling phobias by placing them in a state of isolation which forces them to confront their fears in a series of horrifying hallucinations. I say ‘in theory’ because, this being a Horror film, all does not go according to plan and Andover’s device ends up becoming more of a help than a hindrance to Fear itself.

So with a lack of any prior knowledge of the web series, what was it that drew me to buy this film? As the box cover proudly states, Fear Clinic stars ‘A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET’S ROBERT ENGLUND [and] SLIPKNOT’S COREY TAYLOR’. Such a momentous meeting of two adolescent heroes for the paltry sum of £5 was too much for me to pass up. Taylor isn’t particularly bad, but his role isn’t a memorable one and could have be played by almost anybody. He does however get to sport a rather fetching moustache and provide a decent Metal Church cover for the closing credits with his band Stone Sour. Now as for the Horror Royalty, Englund’s character has the potential to be fascinating, as the fact he plays a character who deals in peoples phobias and assists them in confronting them in nightmares is a neat inversion of his Freddy Kruger persona. He even gets to use his trademark Kruger voice a couple of times. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel Englund’s character was well established enough for me to connect with, which is likely one of several results of this being an off-shoot of a web series. Our leading lady seeking help from Andover is the likeable Fiona Dourif, who reminds me of Kristin Stewart with a wider range of facial expressions. The rest of the cast is rounded out by a rag tag group of agitated young misfits, and this along with being set primarily within a mansion housing fantastical science equipment, means Fear Clinic is reminiscent of X-Men to an extent. I guess you might say that your individual phobias, which are your weaknesses, are the opposite ends of your inner strengths, which of course is what X-Men is all about celebrating.

From my opening paragraphs you may have already understood what my main gripe with this film is, it feels too geared towards those who have already seen the web series. And while it isn’t the films fault that I didn’t watch the web series first, I feel like a film based on an existing work should always be accessible to the uninitiated. The main crux of the story here is that 5 people were witness to a traumatic shooting in a diner which has left them variably with phobias, psychotic personalities and post traumatic stress disorder. The film takes place one year after this shooting, with our protagonist Sara (Dourif) returning to the Fear Clinic to seek help from Andover with her reoccurring hallucinations. Being set one year after this major event which connects the main characters, and is only seen in flashbacks, made me feel as though the web series must have been based around the shooting events of one year prior. But after some research, I discovered that the web series was actually based around a different phobia each episode, which admittedly might be the most advantageous way to tackle the Fear Chamber concept. The idea of some kind of traumatic event which connected all the characters could have worked to stretch the concept to an hour and a half movie, but the way it’s handled here is so clumsy. The characters and their back stories and phobias are never really delved into in any great detail, which is a real shame considering the possibilities of what the Fear Chamber could do if it actually managed to get into the head of a character we knew and cared about.
Though I felt jipped by the first half Fear Clinic due to its lack of decent plotting or character development, I at least got an entertaining climax. After an hour of brooding and bickering over the Fear Chamber, the diner, relationships and whatever else, some awesome metaphysical shit begins to go down. Fear begins to enter the human world and manifest itself in psychical forms, and in scenes which owe much Nightmare on Elm Street, it begins to be difficult to tell where nightmares end and reality begins. Fear Clinic does manage to create some effective creepy imagery with these scenes. One bit that really stuck in head was where an arachnophobic woman grows a big bulging black zit on her back, the doctor pops it open, and a nest of spiders burst out and crawl everywhere! The final scenes almost worth the meandering bulk of the film, and allow Englund to get right into his element. All that I’ll say is; Freddy Kruger on steroids.

Overall, the main thing I can say about Fear Clinic is that it made to want to go back and watch the web series. I really do like the concept of the Fear Chamber, and despite a borderline exhilarating climax, it’s mostly squandered here through a clumsy and unfocused narrative. The idea of their being some kind of traumatic event which brings together a group of charters to visit the Fear Chamber could have worked well if the foundations of that story had at least been clearer. It’s because of this I want to give the web series a go and see if I can confirm my suspicions that episodic story-telling would do more justice to the Fear Chamber concept. In conclusion then, the Fear Clinic film has an intriguing concept that manages to conjure up imaginative apparitions, but ultimately it is too messy and disjointed to feel like anything more than an after-thought to the web series it was based on.

Fear Clinic is available on DVD and Blu Ray in the US, but only DVD in the UK.

(Originally published at https://tornfromthetomb.wordpress.com/2015/07/06/fear-clinic-2014/)