There
is a long tradition of telling scary stories, but getting well-paid for it is a
relatively recent phenomenon. Seriously, can you imagine explaining to Poe and
Lovecraft how much money Stephen King makes? That is the sort of success Fanny
has achieved and Fred aspires to. Alas, he simply isn’t in her league when it
comes to writing talent, but he manages to hang with her for a while when she
challenges him to dueling campfire stories in Josh Ruben’s Scare Me,
which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.
Fred
has checked into a remote cabin hoping to finally make headway on his first
novel, so he is both excited and intimidated to discover Fanny is his nearest
neighbor. Her zombie novel is a #1 bestseller, a fact she lords over him. Fanny
loves to throw around jargon like patriarchy and “toxic masculinity,” so she
takes sadistic pleasure in belittling Fred. He will take it up to a point, in
the hope that some of her mojo will rub off on him. Reluctantly, he agrees to
proposed night of improvised horror stories, despite her constant needling.
In
a way, Scare Me is sort of an anthology film, in which Fred and Fanny
act out their tales amid the simple but spooky cabin setting, with only some
clever lighting and sound effects to augment the vocal performances and
outrageous pantomiming. A bit of chemistry starts to develop, as the two vastly
different writers egg each other on (getting a brief guest appearance from the
pizza guy). Yet, there is always a looming sense that the sinister business of
their stories could spill over into their reality at any time.
Ruben’s
minimalist approach is refreshingly different. Arguably, it is sort of like a
comedic analog to The World is Full of Secrets, but it is less elliptical.
However, it is unclear whether Ruben is satirizing Fanny’s abrasively woke
gender politics are endorsing them. That definitely means something is getting
lost from page to screen, regardless of how you feel about the ideology in
question.
Still,
it is cool to see how Ruben and Aya Cash stand and delivery as Fred and Fanny.
They take on numerous characters and monsters, like they could be Second City’s
horror auxiliary. Of course, like any anthology, some stories are better than others
and the overall concept runs out of gas before the final punchline kicks in. Nevertheless,
it is nice to see a filmmaker try something new. Earning a mixed review, Scare
Me screens again today (1/30) and tomorrow night (1/31) in Park City, as part
of this year’s Sundance.