"Are you okay?" Me, I'm fine. But the lead in the flick I'm about to review is clearly not. She's in a sad state of affairs and boy it ain't fair. This girl is ill-fated and damned. She is popping pills, hurting herself, and having hallucinations like they're going out of style. Added to that, she has to worry about good old high school make-up work.
Anyway, Fear of Rain is my latest write-up. It was released in February of this year and is distributed by Lionsgate. Directed by Florida native Castille Landon, "Rain" is the type of thriller that wanders aimlessly until things conveniently wrap up at the 90-minute-plus mark. The film is a character study about a teenager named Rain (of course). Rain has schizophrenia and while the pic sledgehammers that "beautiful mind" notion, the audience is left with a pretentious, stylistic mess.
But hey, that doesn't mean the performances aren't raw, seething, and substantial. Fear of Rain stars Katherine Heigl, Harry Connick Jr., and Madison Iseman. There are some dramatic scenes that play out well between the three and "Rain" does have a few creepy moments. However, director Landon sidesteps her viewing public. She would rather divulge in weird camera angles, intertitles, grainy lightning, misplaced chimeras, and repetitive "voices in the head" stuff ("just kill yourself", "she's lying", "you're gonna die", blah blah blah). "Rain's" story doesn't really move along like it should. It just procrastinates without regard, indulging in phantasm platitudes.
I said earlier that Fear of Rain is a character study. Well it also has elements that are too little, too late (like mystery, child abduction, and a twist or two). "Rain" lives and dies by its unintentional tagline of "a figment of your imagination or the real thing". Although well intended and researched, that material got old real fast.
Written by Jesse Burleson
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