A common scene in a movie about movies involves some Hollywood type finishing his (it's disproportionately a him) pitch about a movie with some variation on the following: "... villain falls out the window and lands on something pointy. Roll credits."
The scene is meant to indicate this is all some kind of formula we're familiar with, and you can really just plug any specific story into the formula. Once you've reached the end of it, "roll credits" indicates that there's no more narrative fuss and muss and people are starting to turn on their phones and file out of the theater.
It seems like an exaggeration, especially by today's standards (or the standards of any period of time when the audience would immediately turn on a phone after the movie ended), but in the 1990s it was really a thing. Once the climax of the story, especially a thriller, had been reached, there was no more story to tell and the movie just ended.
I went into Friday night knowing I planned to watch something I had seen previously, but would let one of the streamers determine what. I'd gone through several rows of Netflix's offerings and was considering jumping over to Amazon or Stan, when there it was: one of Mark Wahlberg's first films, Fear, which also helped launch Reese Witherspoon, and was a guilty pleasure of mine back at the time. It was also the film that confirmed for me that James Foley had directed another good film beyond Glengarry Glen Ross. (Looking up his credits just now, I was surprised to see that he had directed the final two Fifty Shades movies, which I haven't seen. But those likely do not change my impression of his overall career. Also just learned: He directed like ten Madonna videos.)
I was wary of the film's potential to hold up in any way at all, but as it turned out, I think this is actually the most I have ever enjoyed Fear, in three and possibly four total viewings (but none in at least two decades). Its economy felt truly admirable. Coming in at only 97 minutes, it reminded me of how tight many of these films were back in the day -- another couple examples being the early genre films of Curtis Hanson, such as The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and The River Wild.
Then, when Wahlberg does indeed get thrown out a window at the end -- landing on hard, flat rock rather than something pointy -- the credits do in fact roll.
There's about a minute of screen time left for the shaken and relieved family to hug in the bedroom of Witherspoon's Nicole, which has just been the location of the final showdown between Wahlberg's David and Nicole's father Steve (William Peterson), but no one even says a word. And then the credits begin rolling as a helicopter shot slowly pulls out from the coastal Seattle house, showing a few ambulances and stretchers summoned to haul away the dead. (It was actually shot in British Columbia.)
Fear is not the first film I've recently revisited where I noticed this sort of ending, which some would call abrupt, but I would call economical. As is usually the case on this blog, it's just the one that prompted me to actually write the post.
But the abruptness -- which I'd be lying if I did not acknowledge in some small measure -- was certainly what's led to why we don't see this sort of ending anymore. Plus today's screenwriters seem a lot more concerned about making sure we know everyone turns out alright.
If Fear were made today, instead of that helicopter shot out at the end, we'd get a title card that said "SIX MONTHS LATER." We'd see this family, who had been pushed to all sorts of anger and internal recriminations by the events of this story, together on a yacht or something, looking all smiles and perfectly unified, quite clearly free from any future danger.
Today, screenwriters can't seem to trust us to imagine the happy ending they believe will befall these characters. It's not enough to show everyone hugging, relieved, wordlessly forgiving each other their former trespasses, past the worst of it. Today, we need to know it really did get a lot better after that.
But in reality, would it?
This family has been through a major trauma. The immediate family -- which also includes Nicole's stepmother Laura (Amy Brenneman) and her son Toby (Christopher Gray) -- have gotten through it with their lives, as has Nicole's trainwreck best friend, Margo (Alyssa Milano). The family dog was not so lucky, but that's par for the course in this sort of film.
But Nicole's and Margo's other best friend, Gary (Todd Coldecott), had his neck snapped by the vengeful David, who didn't like that Gary stood up to him in the high school lunch room. (This after David had repeatedly kicked him in the stomach in a previous scene.)
What's more, their house has sustained all sorts of damage, with windows broken and doors axed open. And some of the degenerates who tried to invade their home alongside David fled the scene. Who knows if they're inclined to circle back and murder Nicole's family while they sleep.
So in short: This family probably won't be riding carefree on a yacht six months from now.
There'll be grief counseling. There'll be post traumatic stress. Everyone in that family will jump at every loud noise for the next five years. Steve will remember the one time he allowed a predator to almost steal his daughter and will heavily scrutinize everyone Nicole ever dates again. For her own part, Nicole will think that any guy who shows interest in her might be considering sexually assaulting her. (David gropes Nicole in a very unsettling scene in a women's bathroom.) And that younger brother Toby, who might be about 12? He'll have to deal with having run over one of these degenerates with the family car, which, while instrumental in helping save them -- Toby is really the reason any of them made it out of it -- is still something that would heavily traumatize a young boy.
Plus life just isn't like that. This sort of trauma could bring the family together, sure. But more likely the problems they had previously -- Laura was rolling her eyes at Steve's prioritizing of his work over his family even before David came on the scene -- will still be there.
What it does when the credits just roll is say "The immediate danger is over. Now all that remains is the long-term danger of the complications of real life." And that long-term danger is one we all live with.
A few other thoughts on nuances about Fear that I really enjoyed:
1) Amy Brenneman might be the secret MVP of this movie. She has three great moments and line readings that I wanted to draw attention to.
The first is when Nicole hasn't come back by her curfew and both Laura and Steve have fallen asleep, she in her clothes on the bed, he in his clothes on the couch in their bedroom, cradling the phone in his arms. When he starts awake in the morning and gets up off the couch, Brenneman opens her eyes and says "What" instinctively -- like she had just closed her eyes for a moment but was still fully involved in the task of waiting on Nicole to return. It's just nicely done.
When the home invaders have hauled her husband off upstairs and left her handcuffed on the couch downstairs, she has this thousand-yard stare of defeat that just perfectly encapsulates the impotency of her situation.
Finally there's the moment when a crying Margo shows up at their door, just before the home invaders arrive. Laura doesn't know that Margo has arrived with the news that Gary has been found dead, so her first analysis is that the messy 16-year-old she sees before her is just crying because she's been a shit friend to Nicole, having slept with David (although we do believe that David forced her). Laura surely knows some of this and she greets her with "Oh Margo." The tone is perfect -- it suggests she's saying "I know that you are a shit friend and a mess, and that you hurt my stepdaughter, but in this moment I just have sympathy for the fact that you are an emotionally volatile young girl and that you have recognized your own shittiness."
2) It's really a shame Wahlberg has not pursued villainous roles more often. He may have done one or two more, I can't really remember, but he is so damn sinister in this film that it really seems like a missed opportunity for his career. The scene where he pounds his own chest after an intense interaction with Steve, knowing he is planning to make it look to Nicole like Steve left him with bruises, is just psychopathy incarnate. It's a scene my friends and I used to perform for each other for a laugh (though I don't think we ever succeeded at giving ourselves bruises).
3) This was my first introduction to William Peterson, several years before he starred in CSI, and it always struck me what a good performance he gives as a father struggling with the usual challenges of parenting as well as the unusual challenges of a boy -- a man, really -- who has has designs on his daughter. Actually those challenges are also pretty normal, but they quickly cross over into the abnormal and put him in the role of both hunter and hunted. Don't forget that he goes to David's house and trashes it. He's far from perfect. There's a moment at the end where one of David's fellow dirtbags says, as he's trying to use a log to smash open the door of the house, "An eye for an eye, you fuck up my house, I fuck up yours." Realizing what this comment means, Laura looks at him and says "David?" He acknowledges his guilt of the charge through this little look he gives, which is all any of them has time for as they prepare for the next onslaught.
4) The frankness of the sexuality in this movie was refreshing, given where we've come since. I think most if not all similar movies in 2022 would not have Nicole as being sexually active at only age 16. This film does not demonize her for it, though of course Steve is none too happy about it. The scene where David has his hand up Nicole's short skirt -- she wears nothing but short skirts in this movie -- on the rollercoaster is played as downright romantic, as I don't think we know yet that David is bad news, and The Sundays' cover of the Stones' "Wild Horses" makes that sequence downright dreamy.
5) Since I've mentioned all the other primary actors it's only fair to talk about Witherspoon. She really brings it here. My favorite of a number of great moments is when Steve and Laura are departing for a weekend to Vancouver, leaving Nicole in charge of Toby with strict orders not to allow anyone in the house except her and Toby. Which, Nicole being 16, is the exact opposite of what she plans to do -- she calls David that very night and even gives him the security code to her house. Anyway, as David and Laura are getting in the car preparing to leave, Nicole is already annoyed at her father for something -- another very teenager thing. When Steve tries to leave on a nice note, asking her to give him a smile, Witherspoon produces this delightfully comedic parody of a big smile. It made me laugh out loud.
Okay, I think that's enough on Fear. This economical movie inspired me not to be very economical in my own word count. But now, I'll honor it by rolling the credits.
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