Obnoxious college students discover that THE FEAR is real on Vinegar Syndrome's Blu-ray of this nineties obscurity.

Graduate student Richard (Eddie Bowz, HIT THE DUTCHMAN) is planning his thesis around an informal weekend workshop retreat at his family's mountain chalet exploring the fears of a handful of subjects, steadfastly ignoring a recurring nightmare from his childhood that his advisor Dr. Arnold (filmmaker Wes Craven) finds more interesting and possibly more revelatory about Richard's fascination with fear. What Richard winds up with for the weekend is girlfriend Ashley (VIPER's Heather Medway) who has already diagnosed in him a phobia of commitment, his white rapper buddy Troy (Darin Heames, MILO) – whose ex-girlfriend has been the most recent victim of a campus rapist – Troy's older sister Leslie (Ann Turkel, HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP) who refuses to act her age to the point of taking a much younger lover in shifty Vance (Leland Hayward III, OUTBREAK), Ashley's New Age sexpot friend Mindy (Monique Mannen, THREE OF HEARTS) and her boyfriend Gerald (Antonio Todd, LITTLE BIG LEAGUE), along with Richard's uncle Pete (BEN CASEY's Vince Edwards) who runs the area's Santa's Village with his younger girlfriend Tanya (Anna Karin, WILD CACTUS). In the house, Richard discovers Morty, the wooden mannequin mascot of his late father's general store that had been carved by an Indian shaman who reportedly invested it with mystical powers. Richard decides to use it in his sessions as metaphorical keeper of secrets as he solicits his friends about their deepest fears, alienating them himself until they push him to divulge his own: Morty himself who has haunted Richard's dreams which hide a dark secret. As night falls, someone begins to exploit everyone's deepest fears to deadly ends, but the only ones who know them are Richard… and Morty.

Not to be confused with the following year's FEAR – rapper "Marky Mark" Wahlberg's first attempt at a legit acting career – THE FEAR is more interesting in concept than execution, with the concept by producer Greg Sims (RETURN TO HORROR HIGH) getting hopelessly muddled by the conventions of the body count film. However striking John Carl Buechler's creation of Morty looks, a more effective supernatural alter ego to the killer was already proposed by Christmas enthusiast Uncle Pete in Black Peter who punishes naughty children. The pointlessness of introducing the idea is such that one wonders if the production happened upon the Santa's Village and decided to work it into the script since it is otherwise distracting. The fears of the characters are also underdeveloped to the point that the realization of them in their deaths is not the clever gimmick it was likely intended to be. Some interesting relationship dynamics are brought up, but the script only ends up paying lip service to most of them.

Although the cast is reasonably good – Bowz, Turkel, and Edwards are the standouts – the characters range from obnoxious to unlikable, and the climax is hampered by the authorial indecision about whether Morty is really supposed to be a villain or a supernatural projection of the protagonist's childhood trauma. The way in which the film predates the recursive horror trend of the following year's SCREAM is most painfully evidence is the film's attempt to be hip in using rap songs throughout that end up distracting and undermining the content of the scenes they underscore; and genre stalwart Robert O. Ragland (THE SUPERNATURALS) also lets us down with a bombastic synth score elsewhere in the film. Future CHICAGO HOPE regular Stacy Edwards has a small role here as the latest campus rapist victim. The Canadian-lensed follow-up THE FEAR: HALLOWEEN NIGHT was better-made overall, but not necessarily better (or worse).

Given limited theatrical and widespread VHS release by now defunct A-Pix Entertainment – who found most of their success on the home video market with R-rated and unrated versions of direct to video erotic thrillers in the nineties, THE FEAR first popped up on DVD from Simitar Entertainment using a PAL master of the uncut version (a subsequent DVD from successor company Ardustry/Allumination used a shorter 88 minute cut of the film). Vinegar Syndrome's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray is derived from 4K scan of the original camera negative and restores the film to its original overlong 102 minute running time. A little hazy-looking on video, particularly in the darker scenes, the image now looks quite crisp with better-judged shadows and simulated moonlit blues, with the heightened resolution best serving the movements of Morty whose "suit" hold up well in HD. The Ultra Stereo soundtrack is rendered in lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 and a Dolby Digital 2.0 backup track in which dialogue is clear amidst some good directional effects, Ragland's distracting synth cues, and the aforementioned rap vocals which. Optional English SDH subtitles are also included.