An independent horror that took me by surprise. Here’s my Fear Pharm review.
The premise is simple. Four people enter a corn maze for Halloween and are picked off one by one by the twisted family who own the scare attraction.
The opening sequence of Fear Pharm starts out with an eye-opening sequence of the beautiful Kelly Savanna Deaton being chased naked through a corn-field.
Not quite sure I can look her in the eyes after this one but it’s certainly a gory introduction to the flick.
For a low budget film the cinematography on this one is impressive. The acting as a whole is so cheesy that it borderlines a horror-comedy.
The group of friends share banter but it doesn’t stay positive for long.
Even the family of serial killers are campy and cheesy but it all just works.
The kill scenes are gory indeed but even then comedy comes into play.
With some great one-liners and some laugh out loud moments, this film never takes itself seriously.
Fear Pharm is very self-aware in its setup and how it is presented to the audience.
It chooses the stereotyped horror movie tropes and jumbles them into a blender for periods of the film and churns them back out into their cookie-cutter format.
I was so surprised by how much I enjoyed this.
In a year where I’ve been binge-watching scare attraction horrors such as Hellfest and Eli Roth’s brand new Haunt this was a cheesy addition to that collection.
Whilst Haunt focuses more on the set design and detail of the haunt in question Fear Pharm focuses more on the gory side of things.
Introducing annoying characters to proceedings only has me siding with the killers as I’m actively rooting for them to hunt these annoying idiots down and finish them off.
Whilst Fear Pharm certainly has that rounded horror flick feel it’s certainly not a film that every horror fan will enjoy.
If you’re looking for something different, something unique you won’t find it here.
Everything is very samey, samey and is certainly nothing you haven’t seen a million times before but for some reason, this just works.
It has an endearing quality to it and for an independent production, it feels much like a bigger budget movie.
I can fully appreciate the effort gone into this particular production and I can only hope the filmmakers carry on producing wonderful horror content.
Congratulations to all involved!
Review by Sean Evans
Summary
Cheesy, Goofy and Gory Fear Pharm throws away character arcs and story depth for good ol fashioned gory fun. A film where I was rooting for the killers to lay waste to these typecast characters.
