What happened to Neil LaBute? In the ’90s and early ’00s, he was a darling of the indie film world. His debut feature In the Company of Men remains a provocative exploration of misogyny, and other films like Your Friends and Neighbors, Nurse Betty or even The Shape of Things suggested an original, exciting voice. Maybe he never recovered after the Nicolas Cage-starring remake of The Wicker Man, a nadir for both director and actor, but even Lakeview Terrace and his Death at a Funeral remake were moderately successful. Perhaps he is a bit like Paul Schrader, a filmmaker who persists at making the kind of films he wants, no matter how he falls in or out of fashion. But then again, Schrader is responsible for the most important screenplays of the 20th, whereas LaBute’s career suggests squandered potential more than anything else.
The latest LaBute film is Fear the Night, a home invasion thriller that reaches for significance it never achieves. There are some half-baked ideas about gender roles, LaBute’s preferred topic in his films and theater work, although his script treats it more like an afterthought. Instead, he prefers long stretches where young women cower in the dark, unsure whether they will fall victim to masked murderers who have the house surrounded.
Maggie Q stars as Tess, an ill-tempered Iraqi war veteran who is attending the bachelorette party for her younger sister. Mostly she butts heads with Beth (Kat Foster), her other sister who arranged the party, because Tess refuses to tone down her misanthropy. After some perfunctory squabbling, the groups of fun-loving women make it to a secluded house where Beth has arranged the usual party games and activities, including a private chef who doubles as a male stripper. These scenes are awkward, as if LaBute is shy about showing women have a good time, although that concern quickly dissipates when, almost literally out of nowhere, an arrow flies off-camera and instantly kills one of the party guests. Tess immediately takes charge, hunkering down in the living room and weighing their options, none of which have a good survival rate.
What makes Fear the Night different from The Blackening – aside from the latter’s comedic tone – is that LaBute attempts to tackle his outlandish premise with realism. None of the killers have supernatural abilities like Michael Myers in Halloween, and the action only happens in small spurts. Instead, the film has long periods of dialogue in near-total darkness, which is not nearly compelling as LaBute intended. Admittedly, Tess’ prickly nature leads to some morbidly funny moments, like when she indulges the panic of others and pushes the retort of “Do you have a better idea?” way beyond normal. Ironically, the strains of realism only serve as a reminder why a more gory, stylized approach is often the best choice for the material: visceral terror helps gloss over underdeveloped characters.
LaBute has made genre films before, and still he has little sense of compelling action. Maggie Q is a natural action star, and yet a climactic knife fight has no sense of vengeance or excitement. There is also ample dialogue for the home invaders, who have sadistic impulses, but mostly are thieves who have gone in over their heads (there is a noticeable plot hole in their plan, the kind of oversight that would not matter so much in a more arresting film). Except for a handful of pointed lines of dialogue, there is a gnawing frustration that LaBute cannot elevate the material beyond his perfunctory approach for scene after predictable scene. By the time Tess and the other survivors emerge victorious, the moment lands with a shrug, not a sense of relief.
Maybe it is time for LaBute to return to his roots. One of two films he released last year, the straight-to-streaming horror flick House of Darkness, unfolds almost like a play and has a stagey kind of unease that recalls The Shape of Things. That kind of claustrophobia could have been an asset in Fear the Night, which was tense enough as a family drama and before we see any gratuitous murder. LaBute has never been shy about showing our capacity for hatred and ugliness, even in ordinary settings like a university or corporate offices. Sans killers, a normal bachelorette party could have the same capacity to drum up unease, and under the right circumstances, Tess could have been the real monster simply by refusing to play along.
The post Fear the Night appeared first on Spectrum Culture.