Fear Itself Episode 2: Spooked

Fear Itself Episode 2: Spooked

I'm always up for second chances, and thirds, and fourths. Actually, I feel like I try to give things unlimited chances. So I decided that I would watch the second episode of Fear Itself to see if that installment's writer, Matt Venne, could pull off something better than the first episode.

In Spooked, Eric Roberts plays semi-crooked cop Harry, a guy who will do the wrong thing at the right time to save innocent lives, but in the process killing or maiming those who could be prosecuted. He's done some bad things, but it doesn't seem like he regrets them, until he kills a guy involved with a child's kidnapping; he gets thrown off the force and loses his pension, plus the dying criminal seems to plant some sort of curse on him before he kicks the bucket. Fast forward 15 years, where Harry now runs a divorce-court listening service, and he encounters a woman, Meridith (Cynthia Watros) who wants him to spend the night in a ramshackle, abandoned house that sits across from her own. She thinks her husband is cheating on her, and wants Harry to investigate, so he agrees to make the big bucks. He and his team spend the night listening in to the house, with Harry hanging out in the abandoned shack watching from one of the upper windows. Harry starts to see lights going on in the house, he hears voices that sound vaguely like hurt victims, and he even encounters a teenage kid hiding out in the basement who claims the house is supposedly haunted. Well, after some more strange and ghostly encounters, Harry is severely spooked (haha get the title reference?!), and he gets the hell out of there, meeting Meridith the next day to give her her money back. She persuades him to go back, where he has more visions and a ghostly visitation of the criminal he killed fifteen years ago. He also revisits his past (a memory of himself accidentally killing his brother after finding his father's gun, and then burying the brother as a sort of father-son secret pact), which heightens his sense of paranoia that the house is out to get him. Harry realizes that a ritual had been performed in the house 15 years ago, where three people killed themselves and one survived, and he comes to the conclusion that Meridith was the one who survived. Then, he forgives and forgets and things wrap around on themselves, but since I don't want to ruin the ending for you, I'll leave it at that.

Who doesn't love when they're pleasantly surprised? I know I sure do, and this episode renewed my faith in Fear Itself. Of course, it's far from perfect, but it had enough to keep me interested through its 45 minute runtime. Roberts plays his character pretty damn well, since to me, he seems like an imposing, intimidating guy anyway. I believed his performance, which was enough for me. But one thing that seems to be lacking in Fear Itself is the scriptwriting. I understand that it's hard to tell a story in 45 minutes, but Spooked felt too rushed in its conclusion. I felt like it was trying to sweep too many loose ends under the bed before Mom came in and found the room a mess, because the episode did make use of many strands of stories that were supposed to come together at the end to create a cohesive plot as to why Harry was involved in the haunting. However, as a viewer it becomes confusing because we don't really know the full story on the things Harry did when he was a cop, which are integral to his ghosts, and we also don't get filled in on the haunted house except for a teenager telling us that it's supposedly haunted.

For being titled Spooked, this installment didn't frighten all that much. There were a couple boo scares, and that's all that I can think of that would make anyone pee themselves. And I'm not talking creative scares - they're the same old rehashed loud-music-and-person-in-the-dark scares that pop up so readily in PG-13 horror trash.

This leads me to another problem Spooked spooked out of me. It's the lack of creativity, folks. Essentially, Spooked is a story that we've seen plenty of times. It's Disturbia meets House on Haunted Hill. The genre is becoming too tired of these childish ghost stories, ones that we've seen done better in older movies with less technology. Even the themes in Spooked mimic older haunted movies; redemption, forgiveness, and revenge are some motifs expressed in Spooked, and the only one that we could give a horsecrap about is the forgiveness part, because of the hardhitting scene where young Harry kills his brother accidentally with a gun.

But one thing that did stand out to me, as an imaginative aspect, was how the story wrapped around on itself. Obviously this has been done numerous times before, but I like how the story almost made it feel like one can't change the past and be forgiven for his sins - Harry's punishment is an accident, just like his accident as a child. He attempted to forgive and make up for his sins, but his sins were too strong to be forgotten. The message was dark and heavy, but one I felt was useful and fresh in the tired story.

Oh, and hey filmmakers/writers: Please, please! If you can't make a scary/creepy ghost or monster, don't show it! It's so much scarier when the audience can picture the monster for themselves, rather than showing us a crappy CGI ghost. It takes the fun and the fear out of the show.

Other than a generic story, Spooked was a good comeback to that ill-written first episode in Fear Itself. This renewed my hope and made me look forward to the next episode, even though flawed. I just wish that the stories would get more creative, more gruesome, and less corny. I'm expecting better things, Fear Itself! Practice makes perfect, and if I can improve my cooking skills, then Fear Itself can surely improve its horror resume.