IN FEAR

An opening message left on Lucy's answer machine by Tom deftly establishes that the pair met two weeks earlier, and he now wants to invite her to a weekend music festival in Ireland in the hope of it becoming their first official date.

We first meet them mid-journey, where they've stopped off in a country pub for a pint and use of the toilets. They flee from the establishment following an undisclosed altercation with the locals.

Travelling in Tom's car across the quietest parts of rural Ireland, Lucy (Alice Englert) is a pretty young thing with her head screwed on right while Tom (Ian De Caestecker) is an ostensibly decent chancer who's not above booking a night in a hotel for them in advance.

Though incredulous at his nerve, Lucy agrees that, with the sun due to set soon and the festival not scheduled to begin until the following day, the overnight stay in a "secluded" hotel does indeed sound appealing. And so, they wait for their escort: when Tom booked the room online, he received an email advising that a car will guide him to the tucked-away hotel.

Sure enough, a Land Rover soon turns up and its driver beckons Tom to follow him down several increasingly narrow country lanes. The Land Rover then speeds away, leaving Tom and Lucy a little perplexed.

They soon spy a makeshift signpost pointing in the direction of their hotel. However, the sign leads them down another dingy lane until ... another sign, and then another, and then another end up having them go round in circles. "This is a maze" Lucy comments at one point. One thing's for certain, they can't find their hotel. It's getting dark, Lucy is convinced something is amiss and is possibly down to the aforementioned disgruntled locals.

Night falls and the car is running low on petrol. Tom and Lucy are still going round in circles, now seemingly even incapable of finding their way back onto the main road. Still, Tom continues to insist on finding that blasted hotel. What they find instead is blind panic as Lucy spies someone moving outside the car - and then identifies a series of clothes strewn in the bushes ahead of them as her own. But ... how did they get from the car boot to outside?

The dynamic changes when they accidentally run over a young man called Max (Allen Leech)...

The early moments of IN FEAR bring to mind LONG WEEKEND, especially as the couple drive down narrow country lanes and the viewer does begin to wander whether nature is conspiring against them as they travel in perpetual circles. But the film's second half offers a (barely) more rational explanation for events, and IN FEAR evolves into what the press release claims is a "home invasion film in a car".

However, whereas something like the extremely noisy but fun FIVE ACROSS THE EYES is almost entirely shot within a vehicle, director Jeremy Lovering's film ventures outdoors much more often. Even if it's just to allow characters to take a piss or more closely inspect a piece of paper pinned to a cabin's door.

The exterior photography also allows for some beautiful compositions which show off Ireland's countryside in a most attractive manner, while never compromising the claustrophobic atmosphere that Lovering's striving for.

An incredibly economic project, IN FEAR relies solely on three performances. The actors are all very good. It's worth noting that De Caestecker and Englert had no idea what was going to happen each day on location, having been given only a basic premise outline by their director. This gamble pays off in so far as you can sense the suspicion as it settles into Lucy, eyeing up her new beau and wondering whether he's got anything to do with engineering her current predicament.

The chemistry between the pair is believable. In the earlier scenes, they laugh, they flirt and there is a palpable discomfort when they're asked if they are a couple. When things begin to turn sour, they're equally convincing as the tension mounts and they start to bicker. For once, we get protagonists who are not smug or clichéd; Tom and Lucy are easily identifiable.

Max is a more interesting character, but the less said about him here the better. In fact, the less you manage to know about the film before going into it, the better off you'll be.

In terms of suspense, Lovering does a fair job of building it high on a low budget. It works for the first 65-or-so minutes. That leaves a final 15 minutes which do, admittedly, peter out amid plot-holes and unsatisfying resolutions.

Nicely shot, well-acted and impressively effective in its economic scares, there's just a little too much of the absurd and the inconsistent in the film's latter half for IN FEAR to be truly worthy of the praise it's received from the mainstream press.

StudioCanal are releasing IN FEAR onto UK DVD and blu-ray. We were furnished with a screener of the DVD for the purposes of this review.

IN FEAR looks very good indeed in their uncut, 16x9 presentation. Shot in HD, the film naturally has clear, clean visuals and fine detail in closer scenes. Blacks hold up extremely well too, which is good given that this is a film where most of the action occurs under the cover of darkness. Colours and flesh-tones are kept natural: all in all, this transfer leaves even the harshest viewer with precious little to grumble about.

English audio is provided in both 2.0 and 5.1 mixes, with the latter claiming the edge over the former thanks to a deeper impact applied to the film's straightforward sound design. Optional English subtitles are also on hand for the Hard-of-Hearing; these are well-written and easy to read throughout.

A discreetly animated main menu page leads into an animated scene-selection menu which allows access to IN FEAR by way of 12 chapters.

A really generous set of bonus features begin with an excellent 53-minute Behind the Scenes documentary, entitled "An Experiment in Fear". In it, Lovering expands more on his decision to keep his two lead actors in the dark, even dropping in how their paranoia led to them believing Steve Coogan to be the film's villain when they spotted him working in the same studio.

A wealth of engaging on-location footage is genuinely insightful, while the actors come across as likeable enthusiastic participants during their many mini-interviews. Lovering holds court, of course, with a laidback but focused approach to his craft. A jovial tone is maintained between shoots, which appears essential given the often anti-social filming schedules.

An audio commentary track from Lovering, Leech, Englert and De Caestecker is an enjoyable and fluent affair. It can't help but repeat a fair amount of information already proffered in the accompanying documentary, but still manages to be interesting and - of course - jovial enough to carry weight.

The film's original trailer does a fair job of suggesting the tension strived for in the finished article, while a stills gallery offers a good selection of on-the-shoot photographs.

A really nice addition to the disc is the inclusion of an isolated score by Roly Porter too, which gives us 20 minutes of music "from and inspired by" IN FEAR. Dim the lights and let the atmosphere of dread take its hold!

StudioCanal's DVD opens with trailers for the EVIL DEAD remake, THE LAST EXORCISM PART 2 and SIGHTSEERS.

IN FEAR is good. Very good in parts. It's certainly stylish and the young cast deserve praise. But Lovering succumbs to silliness in the final moments and the explanation of what's going on is just too dumb to accept. So, yes, it's good. But not great.

Also available on blu-ray.

By Stuart Willis