Horror anthology on TV has been getting progressively worse since it hit it's pinnacle with Tales From the Crypt (TFTC). TFTC was an amazingly brilliant masterpiece of horror TV anthology series that set the bar for this type of programming as high as it could possibly be. Admittedly, TFTC jumped the shark and became a bad show in Season 7 when it moved production from USA to Britain for no reason. But that is only 1 bad Season out of 7. TFTC still provided 6 Seasons worth of perfect TV horror.
Then came Masters of Horror (MoH), and next notable TV horror anthology series. MoH was hit and miss. 8 of the 26 episodes of MoH were brilliant masterpieces. The other 18, however, ranged from mediocre to terrible; the lion's share being terrible. Despite being a bad series overall, at least that's 8 brilliant episodes of horror television that MoH contributed to the annals of great TV horror.
Then comes Fear Itself. Fear Itself is by it's very format, a vastly degraded version of MoH. TFTC which was made for HBO, MoH was made for Showtime. Both channels are not standard channels which the FCC regulates a lot and therefore both shows were able to get away with a lot more mature content than Fear Itself ever had any hope of doing on NBC. The result of this that that Fear Itself is by it's very format, a show geared for little kids. In terms of format and flexibility about what content they cannot show, Fear Itself is exactly on par with the old kids' TV shows "Goosebumps" or "Bonechillers" or "Are You Afraid of the Dark?".
However, although they are exactly on par with each other in terms of tone and what they cannot show, the *quality* of the content of Fear Itself is laughably worse than all of those kids' shows, to an extreme degree.
Fear Itself is horror anthology TV hitting rock bottom.
The 'theme song' to Fear Itself sounds like it's sung by a laboratory baboon who has just been injected by mad scientists with all kinds of wacky drugs. The 'singing' is profoundly asinine and painful to the ears. A shame that such good visuals during the opening credits are utterly ruined with that babyish assault upon the senses of a 'song'.
You may often have heard that Fear Itself is an hour long - that's wrong, don't believe it. Fear Itself is only 42 minutes long and 18 minutes of commercials. Despite having a very short 42 minute running-time, Fear Itself cannot even fill a fraction of that with meaningful content.
Fear Itself fails by trying to pad 15 minutes worth of content into 42 minutes. It's a problem with bad scripts and bad writing far more-so than running-time. The 42 minute running-time of Fear Itself is admittedly a less-than-ideal handicap for good storytelling. But Fear Itself doesn't do much of anything with the characters or plot even with the time they *do* have. In Fear Itself, the amount of content in the episode does not fit with the running-time of the episode. For example, look at the 'In Sickness and in Health' episode; 17 minutes wasted on repeating the same content over and over again (a bride panicking about a note in the Church and having inane conversations with her friends). All of that content which could *easily* have fit into 5 minutes or less.
The acting in Fear Itself is terrible across the board. As is the writing. As are the production values. As are the monster effects. As is the overall atmosphere which looks amateurish, as if it's shot with the cheapest rundown consumer camcorder you would find a local pawn shop. Definitely no suspense or scares to be found in Fear Itself. Fear Itself only employs D-List actors or worse. Sometimes, like in the episode 'Family Man', the D-List actors can surprise you and be excellent at acting. *Usually* though, they will be every bit as terrible as you expected them to be.
Almost every episode has dozens of plot-holes. To add insult to injury, the 'stories' are just rehashes of stale-old clichés that have been done a million times before.
Any viewer of Fear Itself could *undoubtedly* write *much* better dialogue, characters, and plot lines than are in Fear Itself; even someone with no talent for writing whatsoever.
A feature-length running-time is not required to tell a good story, as some have argued to try to make excuses for Fear Itself. For example, the MoH episode 'Incident on and Off a Mountain Road.' 55 minutes minus a few for opening and closing credits, and it had brilliant character & plot development and is a masterpiece in own right. Likewise with the MoH episode 'The Black Cat' which is ~57 minutes minus opening credits.
TFTC was a half-hour show, but those characters and plots were amazingly immersing and fleshed-out *despite that* in almost every single episode. In fact, some people remember TFTC as being 1 hour episodes because the episodes *feel* like they are due to being so richly-made with great characters and plots. That's *with* the opening and closing credits *and* Cryptkeeper's bookend segments before and after the content of each episode eating into the episode content time. Which just makes the accomplishment all the more remarkable.
Understandably, some horror fans want to accept Fear Itself simply because it is horror on TV, which in and of itself is a rare thing. The problem with accepting Fear Itself , despite it being garbage, is that it sets the bar for horror TV as low as it can possibly be. If that precedent is accepted, then future horror TV shows will be just as bad. Therefore, it is better to be honest about Fear Itself in order to let the makers of horror know that a good horror product is expected in the future, not more crap.
Then came Masters of Horror (MoH), and next notable TV horror anthology series. MoH was hit and miss. 8 of the 26 episodes of MoH were brilliant masterpieces. The other 18, however, ranged from mediocre to terrible; the lion's share being terrible. Despite being a bad series overall, at least that's 8 brilliant episodes of horror television that MoH contributed to the annals of great TV horror.
Then comes Fear Itself. Fear Itself is by it's very format, a vastly degraded version of MoH. TFTC which was made for HBO, MoH was made for Showtime. Both channels are not standard channels which the FCC regulates a lot and therefore both shows were able to get away with a lot more mature content than Fear Itself ever had any hope of doing on NBC. The result of this that that Fear Itself is by it's very format, a show geared for little kids. In terms of format and flexibility about what content they cannot show, Fear Itself is exactly on par with the old kids' TV shows "Goosebumps" or "Bonechillers" or "Are You Afraid of the Dark?".
However, although they are exactly on par with each other in terms of tone and what they cannot show, the *quality* of the content of Fear Itself is laughably worse than all of those kids' shows, to an extreme degree.
Fear Itself is horror anthology TV hitting rock bottom.
The 'theme song' to Fear Itself sounds like it's sung by a laboratory baboon who has just been injected by mad scientists with all kinds of wacky drugs. The 'singing' is profoundly asinine and painful to the ears. A shame that such good visuals during the opening credits are utterly ruined with that babyish assault upon the senses of a 'song'.
You may often have heard that Fear Itself is an hour long - that's wrong, don't believe it. Fear Itself is only 42 minutes long and 18 minutes of commercials. Despite having a very short 42 minute running-time, Fear Itself cannot even fill a fraction of that with meaningful content.
Fear Itself fails by trying to pad 15 minutes worth of content into 42 minutes. It's a problem with bad scripts and bad writing far more-so than running-time. The 42 minute running-time of Fear Itself is admittedly a less-than-ideal handicap for good storytelling. But Fear Itself doesn't do much of anything with the characters or plot even with the time they *do* have. In Fear Itself, the amount of content in the episode does not fit with the running-time of the episode. For example, look at the 'In Sickness and in Health' episode; 17 minutes wasted on repeating the same content over and over again (a bride panicking about a note in the Church and having inane conversations with her friends). All of that content which could *easily* have fit into 5 minutes or less.
The acting in Fear Itself is terrible across the board. As is the writing. As are the production values. As are the monster effects. As is the overall atmosphere which looks amateurish, as if it's shot with the cheapest rundown consumer camcorder you would find a local pawn shop. Definitely no suspense or scares to be found in Fear Itself. Fear Itself only employs D-List actors or worse. Sometimes, like in the episode 'Family Man', the D-List actors can surprise you and be excellent at acting. *Usually* though, they will be every bit as terrible as you expected them to be.
Almost every episode has dozens of plot-holes. To add insult to injury, the 'stories' are just rehashes of stale-old clichés that have been done a million times before.
Any viewer of Fear Itself could *undoubtedly* write *much* better dialogue, characters, and plot lines than are in Fear Itself; even someone with no talent for writing whatsoever.
A feature-length running-time is not required to tell a good story, as some have argued to try to make excuses for Fear Itself. For example, the MoH episode 'Incident on and Off a Mountain Road.' 55 minutes minus a few for opening and closing credits, and it had brilliant character & plot development and is a masterpiece in own right. Likewise with the MoH episode 'The Black Cat' which is ~57 minutes minus opening credits.
TFTC was a half-hour show, but those characters and plots were amazingly immersing and fleshed-out *despite that* in almost every single episode. In fact, some people remember TFTC as being 1 hour episodes because the episodes *feel* like they are due to being so richly-made with great characters and plots. That's *with* the opening and closing credits *and* Cryptkeeper's bookend segments before and after the content of each episode eating into the episode content time. Which just makes the accomplishment all the more remarkable.
Understandably, some horror fans want to accept Fear Itself simply because it is horror on TV, which in and of itself is a rare thing. The problem with accepting Fear Itself , despite it being garbage, is that it sets the bar for horror TV as low as it can possibly be. If that precedent is accepted, then future horror TV shows will be just as bad. Therefore, it is better to be honest about Fear Itself in order to let the makers of horror know that a good horror product is expected in the future, not more crap.