BE AFRAID – Review

BE AFRAID seems the type of film that would grace the grindhouse theaters back in the day when those existed. It’s a film akin to unambitious but well-made grindhouse movies that seem to have made up the slate of films at a local multiplex. Those solid well told stories, that seemed familiar and unimpressive, yet infectiously watchable. Those films that didn’t seem like high art because they didn’t need to be. They just needed to be entertaining.

BE AFRAID follows a Dr. John Chambers, as he and his family start to discover a dark force occupying the town that they have just moved into. The familiar is combed over: a concerned wife, a snarky teenage son, a moppet, and an ending that is not guaranteed to be happy.

It’s the textbook 80’s horror movie, but it’s not a bad textbook 80’s horror movie. You had to try to actually make one of these that was bad and BE AFRAID never feels bad. It feels perfectly compelling if a bit compromised by the reality that it was conceived as just another simple horror movie. If anything, the most compelling part seems to be the fact that the film comes off so solid. The direction, acting, and editing at play seem so fit for a low budget horror film that the film easily accomplishes the task of being a good low budget horror film. Nothing more, nothing less.

BE AFRAID is the type of film that it is the hardest to write about in that there’s not much to the film other than the overall quality of the work. Be Afraid is a good horror movie, that would be a better one if it just was. There’s not much more to it than that.