Jack is a children's author turned crime novelist whose detailed research into the lives of Victorian serial killers has turned him into a paranoid wreck, persecuted by the irrational fear of being murdered. Read more …
When Jack is thrown a life-line by his long-suffering agent and a mysterious Hollywood executive takes a sudden and inexplicable interest in his script, what should be his big break rapidly turns into his big breakdown, as Jack is forced to confront his worst demons; among them his love life, his laundry and the origin of all fear.
While Mills has a strong visual eye, the result is more flawed than fearless.
If the plotting had been less perfunctory, this scruffy, dada-ishly imaginative feature would have been closer to fantastic.
It’s always trying to do something unusual. It has a great lead in Pegg. What it doesn’t have is an ending or a clear reason what it wants to be.
Simon Pegg is an incredibly likeable actor who seems determined to appear in as many unlikeable films as possible, but even taking into account recent debacles such as Burke and Hare, this represents an alarming new low.
Horrific, and not in a good way.
The very idea of Simon Pegg as a paranoid wreck should be comedy gold but A Fantastic Fear Of Everything fails to make the most of such potential and isn’t sharp enough to provide the laughs we might have expected.
Mills throws in some inventive animation of hedgehogs and includes one or two moments of passable slapstick but the overall effect here is grim.
Crispian Mills's London-based horror-comedy is so spectacularly bungled that it leaves the viewer in a state of advanced petrification.
The mind-numbingly inconsequential plot might have worked in a short film or an episode of Pegg's sitcom, Spaced, but as a feature film A Fantastic Fear of Everything is a wretched waste of time.
Harmless, yet shockingly badly made.
As a pet project from the frontman of mystical Brit poppers, Kula Shaker, A Fantastic Fear of Everything isn’t nearly as psychedelic or as funny as it needs to be.
Fear falls short of fantastic yet it’s a decent effort that, like Pegg’s beard, proves to be something of a grower.
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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