Phobias

I learned some new phobias today. An anthology movie on Hulu. Five patients who suffered from different phobias were put into the test from a crazed doctor. So that's the given synopsis of the movie. That's basically a spoiler of the overall arc of movie. What the heck? Apparently the synopsis said these people suffered from phobias. Um not all of them did. Each time the patients were tested, we were taken back to their past. The first three were pretty mediocre, and the first one had a fire effect that was so horrible and fake. The last two was more sinister and interesting, especially the last one. The movie maintained suspense mostly by having nonstop and a variety of background suspenseful sounds. Even though they often worked, sometimes they felt excessive and overused. The overarching story was pretty laughable. It was stupid because it could have ended much earlier. There should be more effort into making the main story more competent. Overall, not the best or the worst anthology, but it was pretty decent and entertaining. 6/10.

I had no idea this was an anthology and was disappointed when I found out. The reason for that is that the opening Asian-American storyline is pretty decent, but then it suddenly finishes unfinished and we move onto increasingly less elaborate and engaging tales. Most dwell on predictable violence and shock scares, and the wraparound story goes nowhere either.

The only interesting about the movie was the plot, the storyline and the characters. The location was ok. The execution was a failure. It wasn't scary at all. The kills weren't nice. Unfortunately, the movie wasn't good.. Also, in my opinion the trailer is better than the movie. By the way, some scenes weren't edited well, which made them look very unrealistic.

It's extremely difficult to put this film into words. It is simply such a confused, muddled, laughably pretentious, but blatantly empty-headed mess that it almost defies explanation. It certainly defies logic. It didn't have to be this way. The concept of the film itself is decent enough, but the execution is unbelievably bad. At it's core, this is simply an anthology film, meant to tie together several traumatized people's psychological and supernatural experiences with a wrap-around in which they have been kidnapped by a corporation that is seeking to literally "extract" and "weaponize" the emotion of fear itself. I'm always down for a good omnibus film, and one about individual phobias shouldn't be that hard to pull off. That's the film's first inexplicable mistake. This is not a film about "phobias" whatsoever. It would've been more appropriately titled "Traumas" as a traumatic event is the only reoccurring theme in each segment. Only one of the five stories here addresses an actual phobia, despite the title card of each opening with the name of a phobia that is usually inappropriate to the content of the tales themselves. The next glaring issue, is that this is a film that attempts to link each of it's stories into one coherent thread, but utterly fails to do so. None of these stories have anything to do with one and other, let alone do many of them make any sense on their own. Even the shadowy organization that is supposed to be the backbone of the entire film is nonsensical. It's never explained or rationalized whatsoever, why this team of scientists wants to, or how they plan to "weaponize fear". It's only briefly touched upon that the sadistic doctor wants to "change the world" with the gas that is inexplicably created by electrocuting his prisoners, which in turn, for no logical reason, causes them to relive their most traumatic memories. We've no idea what these people plan to do with the "fear gas", though other characters momentarily suggest some sort of conspiracy. Each of the segments are brief and pointless, none of them telling coherent, meaningful stories. They mostly seem like a completely random collection of weird events with no rhyme or reason. Even worse is that the film is chock-full of stilted, sometimes downright atrocious acting. And despite having numerous directors, the entire picture has the look and feel. There is a constantly annoying sound design, bombarding the viewer with sharp noises and obnoxiously loud, pulsating bass. Perhaps in an attempt to inflict tension that is instead simply grating. Even the visual effects are laughable. There simply isn't one, single, redeeming factor about this absolute turd. Perhaps the only good thing to be said about it is that the film has a polish and glean to it's cinematography that is utterly wasted on an imbecilic script, terrible actors and a pointless film.

Split into five sections, with a central narrative tying them together, this film feels a tad disjointed. Each section has a separate director... and each is named after a specific phobia. "Robophobia" & "Hoplophobia" are the two best sections. The others leave room for improvement. Camilla Belle, makes her directorial debut with the latter of those two... and she shows assured cinematic control and storytelling. Other than that, this is really worth skipping.

Good looking movie and performance by Leonardo Nam. The stories weren't that interesting nor scary but if you have nothing to do on a Friday night it's worth a view...

The title is misleading but this anthology is mixture of stories held together by a thin plot. The writers have chosen the path less travelled & the unconventional route in that the characters vary from victims to villains. Each character has an unique story but I recall the first and last. The ending is a bit too predictable. I could see scenes that have been done better in more famous films...

I was pretty excited when I heard this movie was coming out. I loved Alexis Knapp and Hanna Lee in the Pitch Perfect movies. And Leonardo Nam wasn't bad in the Sisterhood of traveling pants movies. I even sought it out when I saw it was released. However, I have to say they wasted these actors on what feels like an unfinished script. If you have seen the MASH episode Dreams, this basically a movie version of that episode as 5 different characters have their worst fears realized in their dreams. The only real difference is in this film is we find out that the government is making the characters have their bad dreams. And while this has potential, the movie never really engaged me. I won't spoil anything, but I was very underwhelmed by it all. The acting wasn't great, and I have a hard time finding most of the dreams believable. For instance, who is scared of middle school kids? Additionally, Alexis Knapp is barely in the movie! They did her dirty by making her part so small :(. Also, the writing is terrible, and the ending is so sloppy you would think a middle school kid came up with it. Now I don't want to be too harsh because there is a chance this movie's filming got cut short due to Covid-19 because it was really short, and another 30 minutes would've really helped it tell a complete story. But with that said, I feel like they really needed to do some rewrites before publishing this movie because it feels like only half a movie.

You have to pay attention or you get lost. But it is very similar to black mirror.

"Let's get you hooked up". No thanks. I'd rather eat liver and onions. Anyway 2021's Phobias is my latest review. It features singer Macy Gray, Leonardo Nam, and Alexis Knapp. Now does Phobias have anything to do with actual phobias? Not the simple ones mind you (fear of heights, fear of spiders, fear of snakes). Was Phobias more fun to imagine than it was to watch? Uh-huh. And is Phobias one of the worst outings of this year? It's only March but yeah. Terror-filled but not really scary and visionary but totally fitful, Phobias makes you stand up and say, "I could probably shoot this thing better and I'm not even a director". Helmers Camilla Belle and Maritte Lee Go thought they could take Saw and 1995's Strange Days and mesh them together. They thought wrong because Phobias for all its grim ambition and held-against-one's-will stature, is a plodding mess. Belle and Lee Go fashion Phobias as a horror film that feels too elaborate for its own good. There are flashback scenes that go on too long. There are supposed payoffs that never happen. There's hate crime elements that are probably wrong for this present time. Finally, there's an abrupt ending that feels rushed and pasted on. I studied the running time of Phobias (85 minutes) wondering how the heck the filmmakers were gonna wrap this thing up. Yeah the bad guy dies eventually but do we really give a rat's butt? Uh no. Phobias is confusing, poorly edited, and disjointed to the nth degree. In order to figure out what was going on, I actually needed to look at the flick's wiki entry (patients at a government testing facility are examined to provide an answer to weaponizing fear). Bottom line: Minus a trippy opening credit sequence, my biggest "phobia" is having to sit through Phobias again. "Fear factor" crapshoot.