A wicked little horror film in which nearly all of the violence takes place in your head, “In Fear” expertly builds terror out of not much more than two people driving around in a car.
Alice Englert and Iain de Caestecker play a newly formed couple in Ireland who, after a few drinks in a pub, agree to spend the night in a local hotel. What happened in the bar isn’t quite clear, but director Jeremy Lovering winches the foreboding tight as the couple drive around in circles, getting lost in a maze-like set of roads.
As night falls — almost all of the movie takes place in real time — things get weirder. A figure in a white mask pops up by the roadside and the two find themselves with a passenger — a dazed and bleeding man (Allen Leech, Tom on “Downton Abbey”) who is a victim of the same crazed stalker and offers their only hope of escape.
Though the two leads are somewhat stock characters, and the ending is a disappointment, Lovering steers us through a series of increasingly terrifying twists. The mayhem he derives from such an ordinary, relatable situation is delightfully unsettling.