Taglines: Attraction. Infatuation. Desire. Love. FEAR.
Fear movie storyline. Nicole Walker (Reese Witherspoon) is the average 16 year old girl; wants to have fun, and dreams of her Prince Charming. When her and her best friend Margot appear at a party, she meets older bad boy David. Everything seems to be going so well and Nicole and David become a couple. Nicole’s family like David and she decides she loves him enough to give herself to him one night after a date.
However, as soon as they became official, David has become a possessive and jealous boyfriend. He even beats up one of Nicole’s close male friends when he is seen giving her a hug at the end of school. After this dark event Nicole never wants to see David again but he tries his hardest to make sure Nicole will take him back.
Soon enough she forgives him and things seem to be going well again until a sick situation involving Nicole’s best friend Margot turns to her and David breaking up again. This time David is not taking any chances with not being with Nicole so him and his friends go into her family home and attempt to take Nicole. Will David get Nicole or will she and her family hold back and get rid of David’s sick craving for Nicole?
Fear is a 1996 American psychological thriller film directed by James Foley and written by Christopher Crowe. It stars Mark Wahlberg, Reese Witherspoon, William Petersen, Alyssa Milano and Amy Brenneman. It revolves around an upper-middle class family whose seemingly perfect existence is threatened when their teenage daughter begins dating an attractive and mysterious young man, much to her father’s chagrin.
Film Review for Fear
‘Fear” is hard to resist. On one hand it’s a shameless thriller that makes up for the inevitability of its story by consistently being bigger, faster and more appalling than you might expect. On the other hand it contains enough truth about fathers, teenaged daughters and young lust to distinguish it from most thrillers and ground it in vivid emotion.
“Fear,” which opens today, is a nightmare fantasy for fathers. William Petersen plays Steve, an architect whose 16-year-old daughter Nicole (Reese Witherspoon) waltzes into the house one day with a handsome character who has to be at least 23. Dad just knows this guy, David — played by Mark Wahlberg a.k.a. former rap star and underwear model Marky Mark — is no good.
It turns out to be perfect casting. David meets Nicole at a sleazy pool hall and lays the stammering and sensitive rap on her, a kind of James-Dean-without-tears routine. Then he kisses her, but not like the boys in high school do. He puts his mouth against her cheek and starts moving his mouth like a cow munching grass. Highly erotic. Young Nicole is sunk.
“Fear” is delightfully frustrating. Our sympathy is with the father who, like the audience, has David pegged from the jump. But the daughter is unreachable. To her, David is exciting. He drives a Corvair. And he respects the fact that she’s a virgin — for about a week.
There’s a funny yet eerie moment when David, talking to the father, yells into the next room for Nicole to get him a Coke. The camera cuts to a close-up of Dad doing a slow burn. David is the handsome lunatic lurking in the life history of many women. When he drives up and sees Nicole talking to a male friend, he leaps out, throws the guy to the ground and starts kicking him mercilessly. In the process he gives Nicole a black eye.
Wahlberg makes a fine villain. He plays David as a fellow without affect, an emotionally naked psychopath who anticipates no long- term problems for his and Nicole’s relationship were he to shoot her father in the head, for example. He’s also a romantic. Everything in the way of their love must be eliminated.
“Fear” is a story of break-ups and reconciliations, and of scenes of rapidly escalating violence. Director James Foley and screenwriter Christopher Crowe keep raising the stakes all the way to a finish that’s something out of “The Straw Dogs.” It’s a maddening, satisfying, junky, enjoyable picture.
Fear (1996)
Directed by: James Foley
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Reese Witherspoon, William Petersen, Alyssa Milano, Amy Brenneman, Christopher Gray, Tracy Fraim, Jason Kristofer, Todd Caldecott
Screenplay by: Christopher Crowe
Production Design by: Alex McDowell
Cinematography by: Thomas Kloss
Film Editing by: David Brenner
Costume Design by: Kirsten Everberg
Set Decoration by: Dominique Fauquet-Lemaitre
Art Direction by: Richard Hudolin
Music by: Carter Burwell
MPAA Rating: R for strong graphic violence and terror, sexuality, language and drug use.
Distributed by: Universal Pictures
Release Date: April 12, 1996
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