The Only Thing You Have To Fear Is

Team Experience from the Tribeca Film Festival - here's Jason on "Rebirth" and "Fear Inc."

It's weird that I brought up the 2006 film Severance last week when reviewing director Christopher Smiths' latest, because as soon as I sat down to watch Rebirth, writer-director Karl Mueller's new film about a suburban office drone sucked into a nightmare spiritual retreat, Severance was on my mind once again. Rebirth is never half as nasty as that film but the dots are there to be connected. This, too, is a satire most black about the search for that something greater than the proverbial pushing of pencils.

Kyle (Fran Kranz, Whedonite staple) starts the movie with a life that's tossed off in one of those meaningfully repetitive montages straight out of Fight Club. You know the type: coffee, car, cubicle, coffee, car, cubicle, and on and on to a not-early-enough grave...

Suddenly, hark a vagrant from the past - Kyle's college buddy Zack shows up (played by Adam Goldberg like one of those chattering wind-up monkey drummers)  with an invite to a place called Rebirth. It's a mysterious orgy spa or something, and Zack feeds Kyle just enough rope to tie himself up with, sexual-like. As soon as the come-hither blonde in khakis shows up dude never stands a chance. You can pretty much see where Rebirth's going (it's never subtle, that's for sure) but I like Fran Kranz an awful lot (although I have heard from several sources I'm... particular... in this regard) and the story has a lot of fun nesting-doll itself outward so you're never quite sure where its fantasy ends and total oblivion begins, getting nuttier and nuttier as it goes. The closing credits alone are worth the stay.

Grade: B

And speaking of speaking of -- if Rebirth made me think about reviews from last week and movies from 2006, then Fear Inc. made me think about Rebirth, completing this small and smaller circle. A noose tightening, or those aforementioned nesting dolls, ever shrinking, are an apt metaphor here - Fear Inc. deals hard in circles inside circles, lined with smoke and mirrors and psychopaths at every turn.

Have you ever gone to one of those Extreme Haunted Houses? They've become quite the rage over the past few years - you have to sign a release form and the folks inside go well beyond the call of duty, poking and prodding and kind of straight-up molesting too. This ain't your Grandpa's Freddy Kreuger Mask hiding behind a hay-stack. Fear Inc. takes this phenomenon to its illogical extreme - think David Fincher's film The Game. Seriously - the movie itself name-checks that movie, so think it. The haunted house becomes your life, and possibly... beyond. Wha ah ah.

There's a certain point where having the rug pulled out from under you stops being fun or making the slightest bit of sense - instead of rugs they're tearing up floorboards and basement beams and digging a hole deep into the dirt. Fear Inc drags us all down there. It helpfully keeps its humor about itself, and there are some visual gags that tickle the fanciest fancies of this horror movie buff (the neighbor getting "Barrymored" was probably my hardest laugh at the entire Festival), but there's only so long you can make an audience care with this stuff and Fear Inc had me shouting my safety word and reaching for the release hatch well before the exit.

Grace: C+