Fear

Universal Pictures | Release Date: April 12, 1996

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

51	METASCORE Mixed or average reviews based on 16 Critic Reviews

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Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)

Testosterone-driven entertainment with a moral, sleekly directed by James Foley. Read full review

Mick LaSalle

It's a maddening, satisfying, junky, enjoyable picture. Read full review

Barry Walters

Forceful and well-acted. Fear truly lives up to its title. Read full review

Shawn Levy

Wahlberg is the centerpiece of Fear, director James Foley's surprisingly taut new thriller that's equal parts "Cape Fear," "Endless Love" and "The Wild One." [12 Apr 1996]

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Foley has a fine sense of shading in depicting a slightly dysfunctional family. The problem with this subgenre is the way it has to demonize and dehumanize its villains in order to produce the desired effect, which brutalizes the spectator along with the story and characters. If you can accept this limitation, this is a very efficient piece of machinery. Read full review

Hal Hinson

Fear is pretty much a cheap-thrills fix; the ideas, such as they are, function as window dressing. Still, cheap though these thrills may be, they are genuinely thrilling. Read full review

EmpireBob McCabe

Fear, a sort of pubescent Fatal Attraction, is derivative and often risible, in the competent hands of Foley it's also highly enjoyable. Read full review

Emanuel Levy

The thriller telegraphs most of its suspense payoffs, and the audience is almost always ahead of the game. What's most disappointing is that the characters begin as well-etched individuals, but are gradually turned into mere plot functions. Read full review

Jack Mathews

Fear, thanks mostly to Foley's stylish direction and a couple of strong performances, is a much better movie than "Whispers," but those familiar with the formula will get no major surprises. [12 Apr 1996]

James Berardinelli

A kinetic, visually dazzling thriller that's actually a notch above many of its predecessors - albeit only a small notch. Read full review

Stephen Holden

A nasty little thriller that starts out on a somewhat higher plane but eventually trades in its level head for conventional scare tactics and violence. Read full review

Stephen Hunter

Initially powerful and unsettling, the movie loses its hold when it becomes stupid and violent. [12 Apr 1996]

Matthew Gilbert

Fear is a formulaic thriller that is like "Cape Fear" meets "Fatal Attraction," or "Splendor in the Grass" on crack, but without a hint of those movies' psychological complexities and camp moments. [12 Apr 1996]

Patrick Z. McGavin

A movie as unsubtle as its title suggests, Fear is too seriously intended to work as trash and too ungainly and ugly to register as entertainment. [15 Apr 1996]

Rick Groen

Fear strikes out in slasher flick This movie is laced with enough gratuitous bloodshed and reactionary zeal to warm the heart of a Montana militiaman. [12 Apr 1996]

Marjorie Baumgarten

Despite a few scattered moments of visceral excitement, the only thing truly frightening about the oh-so-ominously titled Fear is how so many talented people came to be involved in so inane a project. Read full review