If you’ve ever wanted to experience the cinematic equivalent of being stuck in an elevator with someone explaining the stock market while a snake crawls across your lap, congratulations: Phobia is your dream come true. Directed by John Huston—yes, that John Huston, the man behind The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre—this 1980 Canadian psychological thriller somehow manages to sully a legendary career with a parade of clichés, lethargic pacing, and acting that oscillates between “sleepwalking” and “actively regretting life choices.”
Plot, Or Something Like It
The movie’s premise is simple enough on paper: psychiatrist Dr. Peter Ross (Paul Michael Glaser, forever known to fans of Starsky & Hutch as a man who should probably have stayed on TV) experiments with radical therapy to cure five patients of their phobias: heights, crowds, enclosed spaces, men, and snakes. Sounds promising, right? Wrong. Enter an unknown killer who apparently spent 20 minutes on the Internet reading “how to murder people using their phobias,” and suddenly, the plot becomes a series of contrived deaths that feel less “psychological terror” and more “morbid Bingo card.”
Watching Phobia is like watching someone try to teach a cat algebra: the ambition is impressive, but the execution is baffling and mildly terrifying for the wrong reasons.
Acting So Wooden, You Could Build a Deck
Paul Michael Glaser’s performance is a masterclass in blandness. As Dr. Ross, he radiates an aura of confusion that feels intentional until you realize it’s probably not. The patients—Susan Hogan, David Bolt, Lisa Langlois—flail through their phobias with a level of conviction best described as “meh.” There’s a scene where someone is terrified of heights and we… get a pan of the skyline and a bored glance. That’s it. Cinematic fear? Nah. Yawns per minute? Off the charts.
Inspector Larry Barnes (John Colicos) is your obligatory police presence, though he spends most of the film asking questions with the urgency of someone stuck in traffic. And when a snake finally makes its cameo appearance, the reaction shots are so lackluster you start questioning if the crew fed it a tranquilizer and forgot to tell the audience.
Direction and Pacing: The Slowest Rollercoaster Ever
Huston, normally a maestro of tension, here seems more interested in letting the clock tick than the story unfold. The film drags through long corridors of Canadian suburbia with the weight of a coffin. Every “thrilling” scene is padded by minutes of someone walking, sitting, or staring. It’s less “psychological thriller” and more “watching paint dry while occasionally glancing at a snake.”
The murders, which should be the high point of a phobia-based narrative, are executed with all the suspense of a high school chemistry experiment. Doors open, someone screams, cut to reaction shot, fade to black. If you blink, you’ll miss the entirety of the horror. Which, frankly, might be the best advice for viewers.
Cinematography: A Silver Lining
Okay, I’ll give Phobia this: the cinematography by Reginald H. Morris earned a Genie nomination, and it shows. The shots are clean, the lighting moody enough to pretend something sinister is happening, and there’s an occasional fleeting frame that hints at what could have been a genuinely tense scene. If only Huston had given Morris something resembling material to work with instead of a script that reads like a high school creative writing assignment on “fears.”
Music: A Whisper of Something Less Annoying
The score is forgettable, but in this case, forgettable is a blessing. There are moments where a faintly ominous tune tries to suggest suspense, and the effect is mostly comic. Every time the music swells, it feels like the film is apologizing to the audience: “We tried… we really did… sorry about all the dialogue and bad acting.”
Why This Film Frightens—Or at Least Confuses
Phobia isn’t scary, it isn’t clever, and it isn’t particularly coherent. But it does terrify in the abstract sense of wasting two hours of your life with Paul Michael Glaser wandering aimlessly and people being killed offscreen while you contemplate your own phobias—like boredom, poor judgment, and the inexplicable compulsion to finish a John Huston movie about killer phobias.
In some strange, masochistic way, Phobia becomes fascinating. It’s a cautionary tale for would-be filmmakers: even a legend can falter when the script is a laundry list of horror clichés and nobody gives a thought to suspense, character motivation, or the basic thrill of terror. The film is so inept that at times you almost admire the audacity: to take a talented cast, a legendary director, and a killer concept, and somehow turn it into a cinematic tranquilizer.
Final Verdict
Phobia is the kind of movie that makes you question whether your own phobia might be “being trapped in a room with bad horror films.” It’s tedious, baffling, and occasionally unintentionally hilarious, a blend of slow pacing, lifeless acting, and what feels like a script written by a committee of disinterested ghosts. If your goal is to experience what it feels like to watch suspense crawl into a corner, consider this your calling. Otherwise, stay away.
