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Fear Itself: The Sacrifice [series premiere]

By fred | June 6, 2008

(S01E01) This is where things start, the first installment of NBC anthology series that is all about making us scream… Well, at least that’s what they hope, and what I hope(d) as well, to be honest. I don’t really expect to scream, but I sure hope that given the names behind the project this will eventually turn out to be, as it’s been described, a “fun-filled ride of terror”.

And this is how I went into the first episode, all ready and willing to like it and enjoy the ride into horror. And I went into horror territory alright, but unfortunately it wasn’t really the way I expected it, nor was it the way we were supposed to. In other words, this wasn’t the best of starts for Fear Itself, but at least all episodes will come from different writers and involve completely different stories and characters, so there’s hope things will improve in the coming weeks…

Because as far as this episode was concerned, it was really not good. As I said I was hoping for this to be pretty good, given the people involved, and during the first minutes of the episode I was actually pretty happy with what I was looking at. I don’t exactly mean the story and what was going on, but the way things looked. It did look good, and I think that one actually remained pretty constant throughout the entire episode.

This is a TV show, yet the production values were pretty good. I wasn’t really impressed or anything with the “bad guy”, that old vampire dude, but other than that things looked really good — Although to be honest, I kinda expected to see a bit more blood, this being an horror/terror anthology and all. But things looked good, too bad what was actually happening was pretty bad.

Because while I may have been expecting some good stuff, given the names involved in the project, I really don’t think anyone could have been really pleased with what we got there. I mean, what is the most common, clichéd story of the genre ? Yes, a group of people ending up in some isolated place, usually driven there, only to be fed to some “creatures” thirsty for human flesh or blood.

What was The Hills Have Eyes ? Basically that was it. What’s the story of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre ? Same thing again. And what did we get here ? Yep, you guessed it, a group of people driven to some isolated place only to be served as meat for some blood-thirsty creature. It couldn’t have been any more boring, especially since from the first minutes we knew what was going to happen. We did, and it took such an awfully long time for the people involved to realize it ans try to run away, that by the time they did so, the episode was pretty much over already. Yes, that’s how long it took to get there !

And if the story was the most common of all, don’t expect any kind of new approach to it, any twist or anything, because there were none of that. And what a crappy ending, too! I mean, let’s even not try to think about why a vampire would stick around in that place and suck on one dying old guy patiently waiting for new blood to arrive, instead of just running into the wild, and look at what we have there.

We have those people, who’ve been here and decades and decades, feeding the creature. And they never ever thought of that obvious plan to put it into their big hole and set him on fire?? Really?? They know he should be killed, they know fire is one way to get there, they have people willing to sacrifice themselves when they don’t have new blood around, and they never thought of such a plan before ? Really ? How silly was that ??

Just about as crappy as the last shot, with the remaining sister closing up the doors so she can “take care” of the remaining brother… *snores*

This really wasn’t a great start for the show, and not just cause expected it to actually be good. But as I said, each episode will completely unrelated to others, with different directors, actors and stories, so let’s cross our fingers and hope that this was just your obligatory boring introduction, and next episodes will actually get better, as in good, creative, and, you know, maybe finally look like a “fun-filled ride of terror”…

Posted in Reviews
Shows: Fear Itself