Fear (2023) is the kind of horror movie that sits you down, looks you dead in the eye, and says, “Your greatest fear… is wasting your time,” then proceeds to prove its own thesis in real time over 100 minutes.
On paper, it sounds like a solid setup: a group of friends, a creepy remote hotel, a supernatural force that weaponizes personal fears. In execution, it’s like someone tried to remake The Haunting, It, and a group therapy session all at once—then realized halfway through they forgot to write actual characters, scares, or a second draft.
Welcome to the World’s Least Relaxing Retreat
The plot follows Rom (Joseph Sikora), a bestselling author and motivational speaker—because of course he is—who decides the perfect way to celebrate his fiancée Bianca’s birthday is to drag their friends to an old, isolated, definitely-haunted hotel.
Rom’s whole brand is conquering fear, which is hilarious once you realize the movie itself is terrified of being original.
The friend group consists of:
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Bianca – Rom’s fiancée, afraid of drowning, destined to see water everywhere except where the plot needs depth.
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Lou (T.I.) – the skeptic, because every horror movie needs one guy who loudly announces he doesn’t believe in demons seconds before being emotionally curb-stomped by one.
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Michael & Kim – a couple with anxieties and inner demons that the script basically gestures at with the enthusiasm of a tired substitute teacher.
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Benny, Serena, Meg, Russ – people who are technically present, speak sometimes, and exist mainly as fear-delivery devices.
They arrive, drink, hang out, and Rom suggests a fun bonding exercise: everyone shares their greatest fear. This is the point where, in real life, you’d pretend your fear is “network instability” and walk out. Unfortunately, they all play along.
And because this is a horror movie, this group therapy moment immediately becomes a demon’s Pinterest board.
Tell Me Your Fears So I Can Ignore Them Creatively
In concept, fear-based horror should be an absolute goldmine. You’ve got built-in stakes, tailored scares, and room for psychological horror. Fear looks at this opportunity and goes:
“What if we do the most basic thing possible… and then also make it confusing?”
Bianca, who is afraid of drowning, starts seeing creepy water imagery and drowning-related visions. This sounds promising, but the scares are staged like a low-energy haunted house:
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Sudden water!
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Distorted faces!
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Someone gasps!
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We cut away before it gets interesting!
Lou, the skeptic, gets tormented by reality-bending stuff meant to shake his rational worldview, but the movie never commits to any real mind-bending. It’s more “mildly inconvenient visions” than full-on psychological breakdown.
Everyone else’s fears show up as disjointed hallucinations and supernatural attacks that feel less like unique manifestations and more like generic horror stock footage rotated through different actors.
You’d think with an ensemble cast and an entire fear-centered premise, the movie would take time to build individual arcs around each character’s inner demons. Instead, it handles fear like a buffet: grab a little guilt here, a little drowning there, sprinkle in some religious imagery, and call it thematic.
The Hotel From Hell (And Also From Every Other Horror Movie)
The setting—a remote, historic hotel—should be a character in itself. Think The Shining, where the Overlook feels alive, malevolent, and memorably weird.
In Fear, the hotel is more like an Airbnb with a bad vibe.
We’re told it has a dark history and houses a malevolent force that feeds on fear… but we’re never really shown anything unique about it. No striking visual motifs. No creepy architecture used to full advantage. No unsettling layout that ramps up disorientation. Just corridors, rooms, some candles, and a general sense of “we shot this quickly.”
The hotel is allegedly a trap from the start, but that reveal lands with the impact of “yeah, obviously.” If a motivational speaker invites you to a remote lodge to talk about fear and the furniture looks like it’s seen at least three exorcisms, you’re already in the trap.
Characters: Therapy Group, But Make It Paper-Thin
One of the biggest issues with Fear is that we barely care about anyone. The cast is full of talented actors, but the script gives them as much dimension as a cardboard cutout in a Spirit Halloween display.
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Rom is a motivational speaker whose big internal conflict seems to be “I give TED Talks about fear, but I am afraid.” That’s not a character arc, that’s a LinkedIn caption.
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Bianca has a fear of drowning and an entire film to do something meaningful with that. Instead, she mostly looks concerned while the movie splashes some metaphors around.
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Lou is there to be loud, skeptical, and eventually wrong. It’s less a role and more a countdown to “I told you this wasn’t real oh no it’s real.”
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The others: present, breathing, vaguely anxious, inevitably doomed.
The premise practically begs for interpersonal drama: secrets revealed, resentments exposed, relationships shattered under pressure. Instead, we get a few scattered arguments, some yelling, and a lot of running around reacting to stuff.
For a movie about fear, it’s weirdly uninterested in the messy, specific fears that real people have. It settles for Horror Mad Libs instead.
Scares: Budget Jump Scares with Motivational Overlay
Deon Taylor has a knack for glossy genre setups, but Fear feels like it’s leaning way too hard on jump scares as punctuation for scenes that don’t actually build tension.
The rhythm of most scare setups:
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Character is alone.
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Slightly eerie sound.
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Camera slowly turns, music hums.
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BOO! Loud noise, quick cut, moment over.
Rinse, repeat.
There’s very little slow-burn dread, almost no time for a scare to breathe or escalate. It’s all quick hits designed to jolt rather than disturb. Some of the imagery is decent on its own, but without emotional investment or strong buildup, it just becomes noise.
It also doesn’t help that the movie occasionally dips into unintentionally funny territory—because when your film is this earnest about “the power of fear” while not being that scary, it starts to feel like a self-own.
Themes: Fear Is Bad, Actually
The film wants to say something deep about fear: how it controls us, shapes us, and destroys us when left unchecked. That’s fertile philosophical ground.
Instead, Fear mostly just repeats the idea that:
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Fear is powerful.
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You must face your fear.
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If you don’t, spooky things happen.
There’s no real exploration of why these people are afraid, where those fears came from, or how fear interacts with guilt, love, trauma, or responsibility. It’s horror as a motivational poster.
Rom being a motivational speaker could have been a clever device: imagine him trying to apply self-help platitudes to actual supernatural terror and utterly failing. Instead, that tension never pays off. He gets the same treatment as everyone else: freak out, suffer, learn nothing.
By the bleak finale, it’s not so much a message as a shrug: fear is inescapable and deadly. Roll credits. Which is less insight and more “About Me” section for the movie itself.
The Real Fear: Wasted Potential
What really stings is how much potential is just… sitting here.
You’ve got:
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A charismatic cast
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A juicy premise about fear manifesting
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A single-location setting perfect for escalating tension
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A built-in framework for structure (each fear getting its spotlight)
And instead of embracing all that, the film chooses chaos: uneven pacing, shallow character work, repetitive scare tactics, and a third act that devolves into noisy misery without catharsis.
It’s not incompetent. It’s just aggressively undercooked.
Final Diagnosis: Fear of Commitment (to a Good Script)
Fear wants to be a psychological horror about the darkness within. What it actually is is a textbook example of what happens when you have a strong elevator pitch and no idea what to do once the elevator doors open.
If your deepest fear is:
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Wasting time on horror that doesn’t deliver
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Watching talented actors trapped in mediocre material
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Or seeing an interesting premise bungled in real time
…then, ironically, Fear is guaranteed to trigger you.
Do yourself a favor: if someone invites you to a remote hotel to talk about fear, stay home. And if you must face your fear, at least make it a better movie.
