There’s always room for a little more novelty. The greatness of the greatest horror films tends to have less to do with their concepts than their execution but a neat, novel little idea propelling them forward can’t hurt. And it’s the bread and butter of the B-movie, the catchy high concept drawing the audience in, eager to see just how much quality content the filmmakers can wring out of it.
Given the popularity of the high concept approach to horror filmmaking throughout film history, it’s something of a wonder more filmmakers haven’t sought to exploit this genre’s most fundamental attribute as part of their concepts: fear itself. So it is that Phobias, the latest horror title in the bafflingly popular anthology format, arrives on screens with its novelty thematic nub front and centre – it’s a horror film about the terrifying properties of terror, the fear of fearfulness, the potential for cinema to induce emotional states in its audience as exhibited by its characters.
Alas, Phobias is a singularly unscary experience, neither convincing in its concept nor in its execution. It oscillates between competence and incompetence with the frequency typical of many anthology horror pics, never latching onto any thread or motif long or hard enough to achieve its apparent purpose: to scare its audience. This is low-rent stuff through and through, lacking in both artistry and intelligence and never even near frightening enough to compensate.
After an assaultive opening credits – bold and brutish, suggesting a tone of unsubtle aggression only somewhat more stylistically satisfying than what the remainder of the film delivers – Phobias launches immediately into its opening chapter, Robophobia, directed by Joe Sill. Johnny (Leonardo Nam), a second-generation Korean caring for his sick father, is targeted by a mysterious digital entity that both communicates with him via his phone and computer and can manipulate electrical circuits to manifest an increasingly dangerous physical presence. Sill has a fine eye for imagery but only a rudimentary feel for pacing a plot. Crucially, though stylish, his contribution to Phobias only ever depicts fear, never actually engendering it.
Then, without warning, Phobias changes course. Johnny is next seen being dragged out of the back of a van, his wrists tied and his head covered. A menacing doctor in a dark, dingy scientific facility briefly submits him to a spot of abuse and humiliation before escorting him to a dormitory. Here he meets four women, each seemingly in a similar position to himself – captured and, as it transpires, being held by this Dr. Wright (Ross Partridge) so that he may induce and thus somehow weaponize their fear, transforming it into a gas. This is Phobias’ connective tissue, a scenario not only to which it will return between segments but which also leads organically into each segment, as Dr. Wright’s experiments involve his subjects reliving the experiences that brought them here.
In Vehophobia, directed by Maritte Lee Go, Sami (Hana Mae Lee) is visited by the vengeful ghost of a man she ran over after a failed extortion attempt. Chris von Hoffmann’s Ephebiphobia involves Emma (Lauren Miller Rogen), a teacher having an affair with a student’s father, only to find herself at the mercy of said student and her friends when they invade her suburban home. Hoplophobia, the directorial debut of actor Camilla Belle, involves a police officer, Alma (Martina García), whose life is transformed for the worse after a tragic incident on duty gives her severe PTSD. And Atelophobia, directed by Jess Varley, who also oversaw the connecting scenes (titled Outpost 37), stars Macy Gray as an architect whose pursuit of perfection extends beyond her work and puts the lives of her employees in serious danger.
Alternately, these segments feel either overstretched or underdeveloped. There’s the suggestion of a substantial idea behind both Belle’s and Varley’s chapters – Hoplophobia has the potential to be genuinely harrowing and feels informed by real compassion and concern but is curtailed by its brief running time. Atelophobia, while narratively vague and stylistically banal, is enlivened by Gray’s marvellous performance, a strain of weariness searing through her deranged, frenzied dedication toward accomplishing her bizarre, bloody goals. She’s acting, as one would expect from an artist as idiosyncratic as Gray, on another wavelength entirely from the rest of the film, striving for something both distinctive and distinctly real, whereas the film around her seems content with shoddy, sloppy artifice.
None of it is at all scary. Both Go and von Hoffmann display a serious deficiency of imagination, trotting out the same old horror clichés to deflating effect. If it’s a relief that most of these segments are as short as they are, it’s no relief to return to Varley’s Outpost 37, which is the silliest and schlockiest of them all. It’s where the film ends up, as the unwilling patients stage a spontaneous escape from the facility that goes off with remarkable ease and even more remarkable confusion from the viewer’s perspective. It’s entirely clear what happens but entirely unclear how it happens; the film’s final five minutes feel as though Varley was desperately running out of film and decided to shoot 10% of what she needed and live with the consequences, though the poor quality of the film entire would suggest it’s less due to misfortune, more due to mistake. The biggest mistake of all was thinking any of Phobias was up to snuff in the slightest.
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