Fear Itself 4 Review - In Sickness...

This is a review for Fear itself Episode #4, titled "In Sickness and in Health", Directed by John Landis.

(Jon missed the ep last night and my TV broke so, here's Casey with your weekly rundown)

"In Sickness and In Health"; Maggie Lawson stars as a young bride getting ready for her big day, James Roday her groom to be. As she gets ready for the ceremony a note is delivered to the priest to be given to her. As she steps aside to read her note, a shadow is cast over her wedding day; the card reads, "The Person You are Marrying is a Serial Killer".

Directed by John Landis, hopes are understandably high for this fourth episode of "Fear Itself", especially since the series has been lackluster for the first three episodes. John Landis has quite possibly the highest horror pedigree to work the camera so far this season. Landis gets credit for this episode, to my knowledge he didn't bother to rip off another movie which is a nice change after the last to episodes.

So, here we go. This week, "Fear Itself" was at least more watchable with John Landis behind the lense. Their premise was decent, it was well shot, there was some decent tension, even a few laughs. The problems arose in unused plot threads that could have made things interesting as well as many plot threads that just simply didn't need to be there.

My biggest problem with this episode? Predictability. There's an email out there that I sent to Eric and Jon that's time stamped at 10:07pm, the first commercial break. In that email, I made my claim; the Guy isn't the killer, it's the girl. Pretty straight forward and pretty cut and dry. There were some very obvious hints dropped in the opening sequence that pretty much screamed where the plot and the tweest lied for this episode. With it being that easy to figure out where they were heading, it sucked the tension out of the rest of the episode. They made an attempt to make it look like Carlos was at fault; he's an angry guy and a bit aggressive.

As a matter of fact, the majority of my complaints lie with Carlos and his family. There's a large draw of attention to his two Uncles. Identical twins, one worked for the government, one did 'something else'. This was an empty threat that was thrown out there, as they never embellished it again. The only purpose that it served was that one of the uncles (No clue which) fills the bride in about Carlos's parents disappearance and his having to be taken away. Sure, they were trying to establish a motive for Carlos being the killer, but there was no strength to it and it felt limp. All the stuff with Carlos being pissy and chasing his bride around the church? Just sounded like a man pissed that his new bride wouldn't come to their reception. Pretty normal reaction really.

There was plenty of wasted potential here this week. The 'bride' was pretty convincing for the most part, but ultimately will prove to be forgettable. It's possible that this may be looked back upon as one of the better episodes of "Fear Itself," but that's not saying a lot. The story in itself was the best effort so far, as it wasn't a rehash of a movie that we've already seen. (It probably is in actuality, but I don't remember one off the top of my head.) Unfortunately though, it felt pretty flat over all. Even if I hadn't decided what the big twist would be in the first five minutes of the movie, they just didn't do a whole lot with the idea of a bride thinking she's getting married to a serial killer. She mostly ran stumbling around looking confused.