Fear City: A Family-Style Comedy
Directed by Alain Berbérian
- comedy
The story
A second-class horror movie has to be shown at Cannes Film Festival, but, before each screening, the projectionist is killed by a mysterious fellow, with hammer and sickle, just as it happens in the film to be shown.
What it’s like
Bright Riviera daylight and the glossy, crowded glamour of a film festival give way to cheap-looking mock-horror staging, with the gags built on contrast between polished publicity and grubby genre filmmaking. The tone is a fast, slapstick-leaning French farce with a dark streak, its humour running on absurd set-pieces, deadpan reactions and the vanity of the movie business. The killings are played for laughs and are bloody and cartoonish, with a fair amount of gore and vomiting, so the violence is frequent and comic rather than frightening; there is no real dread. Sexual content is minimal. The pacing is brisk and episodic, cutting between backstage chaos and the pastiche horror footage, and the emotional register is cheeky and irreverent rather than warm. Its people are hapless industry figures, press agents and bodyguards who blunder through the festival, with the arcs mostly about ego and panic. It suits a playful night in with friends or a comfort-watch for people who enjoy spoofs of cinema and gleefully silly, gory comedy, though it is not a gentle choice for anyone wanting no violence.
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