In Fear

Shot on location, using only a spare plot outline, improvised scenes and spontaneous performances, Jeremy Lovering’s ‘home invasion movie in a car’ grips like a 4x4, even as the escalating tension threatens to spin out of control. En route to an Irish music festival, Tom (Iain de Caestecker) and Lucy (Alice Englert) opt for one last night of comfort at an isolated country hotel. But confusing signs and a maze of narrow lanes lead them in circles, leaving them stranded as night falls. Feral natives, a creepy scarecrow and dead rodents strung across the road expose the emotional fault lines in the couple’s four-week-old relationship. They start to doubt, distrust and blame each other. Only near the end, when the threat becomes more tangible and the plot machinations more forced, does the film shift down a gear, causing the stomach-knotting tension to abate. Lovering’s taut direction and editor Jon Amos’s skilfully modulated cutting wring the maximum suspense from cinematographer David Katznelson’s multi-camera set-ups, tapping into deep-rooted psychological and primal fears.