Hey, all. "Moriarty" here. Either before or after you read the attached review, penned with a dollop of poison by our own HERCULES THE STRONG, pop on over to Freakylinks.com and check the site out for a moment. This is, of course, the newest effort from the creators of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, a show that will be on Fox this fall, and it pains me to see how completely they're trying to recapture the lightning in a bottle, the magic that was the release of BWP. When people went to the Blair Witch site, they were immersed in mythology, and it was all done with such conviction that it helped spur people's imaginations. They wanted to believe. All I can think after touring the Freakylinks site (boy, that name is lame) is how much I'd like to smack the kid who "wrote" it. Sounds like it made Herc even more violent when he sat through the pilot, but I'll let him tell you about it.
“Fearsum” is a big, boring mess.
One can only assume that Fox will give this show its Friday night berth this fall because of “Fearsum’s” connections to last year’s surprise blockbuster “The Blair Witch Project.” The “Fearsum” pilot boasts a script co-written by “Witch” producer Gregg Hale, who also serves as a series executive producer. “Witch” producers Robin Cowie and Michael Monello serve as series “executive consultants,” as do Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, the men credited with writing and directing “Witch.”
Welcome to amateur hour.
If any programmer at the Fox network is expecting “Blair Witch”-like success for “Fearsum,” he or she is a bloody idiot. This hunk of shit makes “American Gothic” look like “Twin Peaks.” If it lasts seven episodes I’ll eat my toga.
This is the first of Hale’s scripts ever to find its way onto celluloid and, even with New Line vet David S. Goyer (“Dark City,” “Blade”) co-writing the teleplay, it still comes off as something a precocious junior high creative writing student might dash off after watching too many “X-Files” reruns.
The pilot is a mish-mash of what failed filmmakers in Georgia might think would appeal to pre-driver’s-license teens: supernatural goings-on, a hero who never strays far from the Internet, a two-fisted babe, a Metallica-esque theme song, and of course, lots of “Witchy” hand-held camera work, both on film and video.
The mammothly uncharismatic Ethan Embry, perhaps best known for his work as the latest Rusty Griswold in “Vegas Vacation,” plays a young man who takes over his dead twin’s supernatural-investigating Web site after bro is found drowned in his own bathtub. When Embry is e-mailed post-mortem Quicktime footage depicting his dead brother walking away from an ATM machine, he teams with his brother’s boxer ex-girlfriend (hey, Buffy and Dark Angel: she knows how to beat up boys!) to figure out what’s going on.
As plots go, I’ve seen worse. What REALLY fails to fly is the utter blandness of the show’s characters. The folks at “Fearsum” may have taken notice of the fact that network supernatural hourlongs are teeming with colorful, laugh-generating dialogue. Here’s what passes for jokes in “Fearsum”:
EMBRY: Alright, you know what you’re supposed to do, right?
BALD, BLACK SIDEKICK: Of course! I’m a gonna go to the back of the barn…
EMBRY: The front.
SIDEKICK: The front of the barn and make sure nobody shows up unexpectedly.
EMBRY: And?
SIDEKICK: And you’re going to slip through the back and do your thang!
EMBRY: Are you sure you can handle this?
SIDEKICK: C’mon! Have I ever let you down? (pause; no response) This week??
That’s the GOOD stuff, folks!
The reason to REALLY hate the self-congratulatory surviving twin is because he thinks he’s a genius for changing the name of his late brother’s Web site from occultresearch.com to freakylinks.com. Oh yes, MUCH better site name! You should be running fucking Ogilvy & Mather, you fucking retard!
I am filled with hate for this crap show – which has already wasted an hour of MY valuable life. God damn Fox’s programming department to hell for making me sit through this turd of a pilot, no matter how thoroughly I enjoyed “The Tick” and “Dark Angel.”
If I ever run into anyone responsible for the airing of this series, I feel I’ve earned the right to hit that person as hard as I can.
In the meantime, I warn you not to defy me!
