FEAR ITSELF Episode Review: "The Spirit Box"
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Episode four of the unaired five "Fear Itself" episodes, Rob Schmidt's "The Spirit Box". This episode is a mix of sweet and sour. It all begins when two girls decide to do something entertaining for Halloween. Of course because these are two white suburban girls, the entertainment for the evening, a seance. Gasp! Who could've seen that coming? The seance ends up calling up the spirit or the alleged spirit of a local girl who went to their school, and committed suicide. Now, one of the girls is being haunted by strange noises, shadows, and such. Of course the first idea is that it's the spirit of the dead girl.
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But Schmidt tries to do something a bit different with this episode, to not make it so typical, predictable, and cliche. Schmidt, who directed "Wrong Turn", tries his hand at supernatural horror with this episode, and somewhat gets the formula right. While the main characters are super annoying at times, and at other times, tedious, and barely tolerable, the episode is really well shot and directed, so atleast the dark and eerie set pieces are enough to keep an otherwise boring and unflexable story chugging along for awhile. But eventually, the viewer wants blood, gore, real scares, and something worth talking about.
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This episode doesn't deliver any of that from the very beginning, to the middle, and in between. It sets up things to end in a typical fashion. And you kind of get lulled into a false sense of security, thinking you know how this episode is gonna turn out. But Schmidt manages to get you with the ending which is a pretty clever finale. It not only turns the story up on it's head, but it also makes everything that comes before the finale actually make sense, and worth watching again just to see it lead up to where it eventually does. |
The finale is crazy, intriguing, dark, and pretty twisted at the same time. And it involves a whole nother side to one of the two girls who are at the heart of the story. But the twist ending is then quickly followed up by a cliche second twist which you won't have any problems predicting and seeing coming before it actually comes. I'd say of the unaired five, "The Spirit Box" is definitely the weakest of the group so far. But it atleast has a beyond decent twist, which atleast makes it worth taking a look at atleast once.
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