The stark, wintry wastelands of Wisconsin are the setting for Fear X, an atmospheric but unsatisfying mystery chiller. John Turturro stars as a shopping mall security guard determined to find the man who murdered his wife. Hoarding stacks of surveillance tapes from the building's security cameras, he's an isolated loner obsessively pouring over grainy black and white images for clues. It's a quest that seems hopeless, until he begins to have strange visions, apparently prompted by the ghost of his missus.
With his sunken eyes, gaunt features and the look of someone haunted by invisible demons, Turturro is perfectly cast as Harry, an ordinary blue-collar guy trying to cope with his grief by throwing himself into a hopeless investigation. Methodically filing away each and every possible piece of information, he has the air of a man who will stop at nothing to answer the question: why?
"A MYSTERY WRAPPED IN A PUZZLE"
As the supernatural seeps into the everyday world of strip malls, suburban housing estates, and freeway diners, Fear X takes us on a creepy journey into a mystery wrapped in a puzzle, hidden in an enigma. Eschewing A-B-C plotting in favour of a skin-crawling setup, this owes a lot of its edgy frisson to Brian Eno's disturbing score. A gathering hum of static interlaced with the odd tinkle of electronic noise, Eno's soundscape is music to lose your mind to.
Paring down his trademark muscular visuals, Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn (Pusher, Bleeder) lingers over each scene, wringing the maximum amount of unease from each minimalist sequence. Apparently building towards an impressive revelation, Fear X simply collapses in its third act, which unravels so quickly it's obvious the script has blown all its ingenuity on the setup without keeping anything back for the payoff. X may mark the spot, but there's nothing particularly fearful buried there.
Fear X (2004)
