13 Fear Is Real

:

Season 1
Metascore
32

Generally unfavorable reviews - based on 9 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 9
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 9
  3. Negative: 6 out of 9

Critic Reviews

  1. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Robert Bianco
    50
    As games go, this isn't a bad one. But unlike horror movies, the Fear doesn't feel real, and the show is nothing special.
  2. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Jessica Shaw
    42
    Watching them tied up for a find-your-partner challenge is more absurd than scary.
  3. PopMatters
    Reviewed by: Cynthia Fuchs
    40
    The show is, in various ways, just such a trick, not quite convincing viewers that its shtick is authentic, but granting that those viewers get the joke (and will forgive, and even enjoy, the cheesy results).
  5. Philadelphia Daily News
    Reviewed by: Ellen Gray
    30
    I've yet to see proof that "reality" television itself kills anything but brain cells. Which would seem to make the CW's latest entry, 13 - Fear Is Real, pretty pointless.
  6. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Ginia Bellafante
    30
    13 Fear Is Real, a fizzled effort at scaremongering, reveals just how badly reality television can go astray when the casting fails to be creative.
  7. Variety
    Reviewed by: Brian Lowry
    30
    Even nightvision lenses and up-the-nose video, however, can't create a real sense of jeopardy until the final challenge, when two finalists are "buried alive." At least that's semi-interesting, though until then 13 is pretty much a snooze--more scatter-brained than scary.
  8. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Tom Shales
    30
    13: Fear Is Real is cruel in its premise, drably inevitable in its concept and supremely dull in execution. No one risks being scared to death, but being bored to death seems a credible threat.
  9. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Matthew Gilbert
    20
    Watching 13 - Fear Is Real, I was, like, shaking, too, from giggling at the awesome flimsiness of this new horror reality show--when I wasn't bored out of my skull, that is.
  10. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Ray Richmond
    20
    Fear Is Real is the dripping-with-irony title of a CW-staged unscripted venture that scarcely could be more fake, a collection of preposterous snapshots of 13 young people trying their best to scream rather than laugh.