Starring: Ulrich Thomsen, Emma Sehested Hoeg, Paprika Steen
Written By: Anders Thomas Jensen, Kristian Levring
Grade: C
Mikael (Thomsen) is having a mid-life crisis. He has left his job for awhile and is devoting his free time to himself. He goes canoeing with his friend and brother-in-law and jumps at the chance to participate in a trial for an anti-depressant drug. Mikael doesn’t particularly feel depressed, but he knows he wants something more from life. He begins taking the pills and has to go in for check ups every 2 weeks. He keeps this a secret from his wife, Sigrid (Steen), desperate to have something for himself. He doesn’t feel any change for quite some time then suddenly he feels happy, much happier than he can ever remember feeling. Mikael feels that Sigrid has slowly taken control of everything in his life without her even realizing it. He begins to take back control step by step.
Meanwhile, he goes after his brother-in-law’s wife and ends up sleeping with her. He goes on a trip, claiming to be visiting his elderly mother, but really just wants to get away from his family. He picks up a hitchhiker and threatens to crash the car if she doesn‘t take off her top for him. The trial for the pills comes to a halt soon, but Mikael continues taking them anyway, sure that they have resulted in him taking hold of his life and making more aggressive choices. Just as he thinks that he is pulling in his life together, it all comes crashing down. His secrets are revealed and out comes a more violent rage, making him lose everything as he turns against those closest to him.
Fear Me Not is being marketed as a horror film or at the very least the twist ending is being portrayed as that. The truth is it comes as close as it possibly could to a horror twist without actually embarking on this territory. The moments that are most identified as horror is Mikael’s treatment of his wife. I hardly think turning hot water on her in the shower constitutes as horror. He also lets rats in to her room, which could qualify as this more, but since we don’t actually see this we aren’t given the proper atmosphere, tension, or fright for this to seem like anything more than a traumatic event that one character witnessed, displaying to us her uneasiness afterwards. During the hitchhiker scene, for the first time Mikael seems to show a certain darkness. This is where I thought for sure, it would take that turn in to havoc and mayhem. It just barely touched on this and then had the character go about his normal life, which just made the whole set up seem like a wasted opportunity. The very end is the only time when he seems to actually go through with his intended actions, but even then doesn’t go as far as what is suggested. It is significant enough though as it shows something menacing in him. Still it’s not horror, but a drama of a man’s down spiral towards aggressiveness in attempts to feel power over his life, it’s a drama that shows a dark side to what seemed like a normal, but troubled man.
The movie is extremely slow moving, it’s just over 90 minutes long, but it feels much longer. Even towards the end where a little more action comes in to play, it drags more than it should. For the vast majority of the film there is very little actually going on. We are given captivating images and the scenery is beautiful. We are also given thoughtful insights by Mikael as he writes in his journal in correspondence to how the pills are making him feel. Still no matter how good everything looks or sounds, there is a lot of wasted time in the film that makes the audience restless. The premise is interesting enough, but this interest only lasts so long with such a gap with not much going on in the film until we reach the conclusion. It seems like there could have been a lot more done with it. The performances were top notch and there was a lot of thought and beauty contrasted by the vast personality change of our protagonist. The idea of marital problems and a man who seems like he has so much that both collapse all at once and leave everyone changed for the worse is compelling, but Fear Me Not didn’t use its’ time as wisely as it should have and the idea gets tired before there has even been much exploration.
