Review: Be Afraid



(imdb.com)

This review will be short - the worthwhileness in writing it is simply to acknowledge the fact that I sat through it in its entirety. And, while this review takes on a more candid tone and leaves behind the typical standards of review writing, Be Afraid is an insult to horror and deserves nothing more. Equally bad as it is boring, confusing and ultimately dumb (there's not an elegant way to say it), Be Afraid is weaker than any horror movie out this year- indie or otherwise. Where one could typically toss its failures to a lower budget or an indie release, the fact of the matter is, this film is absolute nothingness.

Be Afraid is about a family that moves into an older house where something happened to the previous tenants. There's a ghoul that spearheads the scares, seemingly plucked from the documentary The Nightmare, and at various points a young love story featuring a girl who feels trapped in the hometown she grew up in and a returning stepson with a past, seems to bud. To be honest, that's my synopsis takeaway and I'm not entirely sure it's all right, but it doesn't look like the filmmakers cared to make it clear in the first place. The film stars an ensemble of actors who I won't name as not to mar their careers.

It's the type of film made without care, without passion and most certainly, without the intent to interest its audience. There's nothing scary, thoughtful or comical about Be Afraid. It's never funny-bad so that it could at least hope to end up in a movie pack in Wal-Mart or good enough to even find some sort of middle ground, instead it's simply an unfortunate film without any redeemable qualities, for B-fans, indie fans or horror fans in general.

While it'd probably be argued that this film was loved and cared for; that someone somewhere out there held it near and dear to their heart, but the simple fact of the matter is that if someone did care, it got entirely lost in translation. Be Afraid is a confusing, muddled mess with stereotypical roles and problems. The transitions between scenes, conversations and scares are disjointed and out-of-place and scenes seem directly plucked from far superior films. 1 out 10.