Wizard-8 "Shadow of Fear" has some pretty good production values for a low budget direct to DVD movie. It also has some decent acting by the various participants on the screen. Unfortunately, it's hard to build any enthusiasm for the rest of the movie. The story elements and the characters are often so murky that it's hard to understand what is going on at times. It's like starting a novel at chapter 3, since a lot of the elements in the movie movie go are never explained at all. Some elements are (eventually) explained, but much of the movie remains confusing. What went wrong here? Since I find it hard to believe that production would go ahead on an incoherent screenplay, I suspect that the original cut of the movie ran a lot longer, and when the movie was subsequently cut down to run at a more reasonable length, a lot of explanation was removed. It's too bad, because there are signs that the original cut would have been engaging despite its length. You'd be better off waiting for a director's cut instead of watching the movie as it is right now.

MBunge Let me ask you a question. If you had James Spader, Aidan Quinn and Peter Coyote in your cast, would you make Matt Davis the star of your film? How is that supposed to work? How is a young actor virtually no one has ever heard of like Davis supposed to avoid getting blown off the screen every time he's in a scene with one of those veteran performers? It's like trying to build a house where three sides are made of brick and one side is made of straw. You can't blame Davis for that. He didn't give himself the part. These filmmakers had the money/connections/Columbian nose candy to get Spader, Quinn and Coyote in their motion picture, but then the best they could get for the most important role in the whole shebang is Matt Davis? What, was Urkel from "Family Matters" unavailable? How about Screech from "Saved by the Bell"? Did Adrian Zmed not return any phone calls? Shadow Of Fear certainly has other problems, but this thing never had a chance to be any good due to such an inexplicable imbalance in experience and star power.Harrison French (Matt Davis) is a young businessman who just lost a big deal. Driving home in the rain he hits and kills a guy, whom he drags into the woods and tries to forget about. Two fairly unbelievable coincidences prevent that from happening. One, it turns out the guy Harrison killed robbed a bank that very morning. Two, it seems the guy was also the brother of Harrison's erratic wife (Robin Tunney). Desperate for help, Harrison turns to the enigmatic William Ashbury (James Spader), who promises to help Harrison avoid the dogged pursuit of Detective Scofield (Aidan Quinn). But it turns out Ashbury has some very unusual ideas of what constitutes "help". Throw in the disapproving father of Harrison's wife (Peter Coyote) and a sister-in-law (Lacey Chabert) who wants to jump Harrison's bones, and that's Shadow Of Fear.I can't say Matt Davis does an awful job in this movie because Harrison French is such a worthless character that all but the best would be hamstrung in their performance. Harrison has no discernible personality and before the audience sees enough of him to ever know that, he's introduced first as a loser in his career and then as the sort of bastard who will negligently murder somebody and cover it up to protect himself. And he's the HERO of this affair.The only interesting thing about Shadow Of Fear is William Ashbury, both because Spader is always interesting and because the character is like the Star Trek Mirror Universe version of the hero of a Stephen J. Cannell TV show, if that makes any sense. Ashbury assists rich and powerful men in covering up their misdeeds, then punishes them by making their repeat their sins over and over until they're sick of them. Oh, and he also appears to hit on their wives and young daughters. Why he does it all and to what end is never explained or even hinted at, but there's something intriguing about a character who could very easily be a good guy instead made out to be a villain. It's also amusing to see how incredulous Ashbury is at the end to be taken down by such a nonentity as Harrison, largely because it comes off equally as Spader's incredulousness at how his talent has gone to waste in this turkey.If Robin Tunney and Lacey Chabert had gotten naked and Davis had been replaced by someone capable of standing up to his older co-stars, Shadow Of Fear might have made an implausible but tolerable pot boiler. As it is, it's like a ship that sinks 30 seconds after its been launched from the docks.

omen-9 They say that Hollywood always is looking for something new. So how come they decided to produce this film? There's nothing new in "Shadow of Fear". I mean: rainy night, a moment of inattention and the dead guy in the middle of the road. There rest is as unimaginative as the beginning.Well, there were some positive moments. The concept of the secret society created by demonic William Ashbury is quite entertaining and relationship between main character and his father-in-law is somewhat original. But that's it. The main character is rather dull and Matthew Davis isn't the best actor for the part. What's more, Lexi Nikitas must really hate him, since his make-up was overdone. What's with the lipstick? Davis looked almost like a lazy drag who didn't remove the make-up after the show was over.

sol ***SPOILERS*** Convaluted suspense drama that gets more and more confusing as it goes along with a conclusion that had to be inserted in since it makes no real sense at all to what you saw up until then. Being a member of this secret society headed by reclusive and weird high-power attorney William Ashbury, James Spader, young Harrison France, Matthew Davis, learns right away what is needed for him to belong to that secretive group; Ashbury having the goods on you and using them to make you do whatever he want's you to do. Having trouble paying off the mortgage and also having a big real-estate deal fall through Harrison is up sh*t's creek with him too embarrassed to ask his father-in-law Congressman Henderson (Peter Coyote), also a member of this secret society, for help. Driving home in a rain storm Harrison hit's this stranger on a lonely country road and finds out that he killed him.Panic-stricken Harrison pulls the dead body off the deserted road and hides it in the brush as he drives home feeling that whatever happened is between him and his conscience and no one else; until the next morning when he sees the news. A bank robbery took place the day before and two men got away with $200,000.00 but the bank security camera video taped one of the robbers who was dressed,in a black hood and leather jacket, a lot like the person that he ran over the previous evening. Realizing that he must have run down one of the the robbers of the bank Harrison goes back to the underbrush where he hid the strangers body and finds a sack with the stolen $200,000.00 in it. Burying the robbers clothes on his property it's later dug up by his dog Shane, William Shakesbear, which alerts Harrison's wife Wynn, Robin Tunney, in thinking that it somehow has to do with the bank robbery! Also that Harrison, being in debt and desperate for quick cash, may have been involved in it; later Wynn throws it, the dug up clothes, off a local bridge into the river. It's now when the story takes a very strange turn when it's discovered that the person that Harrison killed is, after DNA tests proved it beyond a doubt, non-other then Chris Henderson Harrison's brother-in-law a local town junkie and petty criminal. It's then when things starts to get bizarre for Harrison with Ashbury coming to his aid to help even though he never told him anything about his accident. Harrison took the $200,000.00 and put it in a bus station locker but Ashbury had him photographed doing it where he could use the photos to blackmail him. Picked up by the police, who Ashbury obviously tipped off, poor Harrison is interrogated by Det. Schfield, Aidan Quinn. Just when it looked like he was going to crack and confess for Chris' death or murder as well as the armed robbery of the bank Schfield's boss chief Webb, John Grant Philips, comes into the interrogation room and tells Harrison that he can go free. There Ashbury again came to Harrison's rescue by getting this pasty Patrick Treadway a homeless drunk and drifter to go to the bus locker and take out the money, or half of it,out and have him photographed! Showing that Harrison had nothing to do with the bank robbery or Chris' death! Now if you think that the movie was strange up until then it gets even stranger when Harrison later being at a social gathering, with his wife and father-in-law, goes up to Ashbury's suite in the hotel where the gathering was taking place. there he finds that Chris Henderson, whom he though he killed in a road accident and hid his body, is really alive and staying with Ashbury in his hotel room! Then who did he, or did not, kill that dark rainy evening? The film completely falls apart after that in trying to make Harrison French into some kind of avenger and have him concoct this unbelievable plan to turn the tables on the conniving Ashbury and have him face the music that he forced him and all the other members of his weird society to face all these years. The ending taking place on the same road, and even in a likewise rain storm, where all the troubles for Harrison began in the movie is so outrageous that you wonder if "Shadow of Fear" wasn't really meant to be a comedy instead of a suspense drama and that the real story got lost during the final rushes and editing of the film.