NETWORK: NBC
AIR DATE: June 5, 2008
STARRING: Jesse Plemons, Rachel Miner, Eric Roberts, Cynthia Watros, Colin Ferguson, and Clifton Collins Jr.
CREATED BY: Mick Garris

Now that Showtime has apparently closed the door on Mick Garris and Masters of Horror the hardest working man in the genre has picked up shop and a few of his MOH friends and headed over to NBC for Fear Itself, debuting Thursday night at 10pm EST on NBC. The network sent us the first three episodes of "MOH Lite", a mixed bag of highs and lows, akin to the second season of the Showtime series but PG-13 instead of hard R. Cribbing from several of the anthology series greats - most notably The Twilight Zone and Tales From the Crypt - Fear Itself tries to spin a different chilling fable every week. But, except for a few moments in chapter three, the first trio of episodes is surprisingly scare-free. It may be somewhat unfair to compare Fear Itself to Masters of Horror, but considering it follows almost exactly the same model, it's damn near impossible not to. If this was the proposed third season of MOH that Showtime passed on, it's now easy to see why.

The first episode, "Sacrifice," features a script by creator Mick Garris himself. Friday Night Lights' Jesse Plemons plays the most apparently naive of a quartet of criminals on the run in the middle of a snow-covered nowhere. A crime has clearly just gone wrong and the gang is infighting when their getaway vehicle breaks down. Across the tundra, they spot smoke billowing from a chimney and track it to a very old-fashioned fort. Inside the large wooden gates, they find an odd coven of women. They may seem Amish, but they're really not (unless the Amish are into rituals I just don't know about). These women, including Rachel Miner, have been keeping a secret for generations. The dark secret may be easy to see coming and not very logical, but the real problems is that Garris just doesn't have time (if you think about it, the commercials on NBC force these mini-movies into an ultra-tight 44 minutes or less) to develop his characters so the audience will care what happens to them. Who lives or dies in this odd scenario becomes an afterthought to some nifty makeup and some rather bloody (for NBC) deaths. Honestly, the most shocking thing about "Sacrifice" is how much gore they can get away with at 10pm on NBC. Considering "Sacrifice" is the worst of the three episodes sent to us and the short attention span of modern audiences and NBC (Quarterlife anyone?), it's somewhat shocking that the executives chose to start Fear Itself with such a mediocre installment. It's the only thing shocking about "Sacrifice".

Next week's episode is a slight improvement in front of the camera, but when compared to its directors pedigree, a step down behind it. "Spooked" stars Eric Roberts as a former "bad cop" turned into a private eye. He's hired by Lost's Cynthia Watros to catch her husband cheating and instructed to use the creepy house across the street as his stakeout point. Of course, the last house on the left is haunted by the ghosts of this private dick's past and what follows is basically a mind-f*ck that pushes our hero to the edge of sanity and unravels a few secrets from his past. Roberts is great and, hopefully, enough casting agents will see "Spooked" to get him more regular work. But the second episode of Fear Itself is ultimately too generic for its very talented director, Brad Anderson. Anderson helmed one of the best chapters of season two of MOH ("Sounds Like"), The Machinist, and Session 9. He's a very talented man, who deserves better than this predictable ghost story. For that matter, so does Roberts. It's yet another case of a horror director and talented actor let down by a generic script. And the "twist ending" - all three chapters try to pull the "gotcha" move so common in Twilight Zone or Tales From the Crypt - is ridiculous. "Gotchas" are a tightrope to walk. Sometimes they're clever, but no one likes to feel cheated as they go into the evening news.

The third episode, "Family Man", contains the most effective moments, but it's largely due to some fascinating casting and a director playing against type. Eureka's Colin Ferguson plays a religious family man who happens to be near-death in a hospital at the same as Clifton Collins Jr.'s mad serial killer. They both come back from the brink of death, but in the wrong bodies. The nutjob goes home to his family while the good guy stays in jail, so evil that he's forced to plead guilty just to be spared the death penalty. The switch allows the clean-cut Ferguson to play the baddie and the often-cast-as-creepy Collins Jr. to play the innocent man. That alone makes for interesting television and the fact that Ronny Yu (Freddy vs. Jason) tries something so different from his usual oeuvre adds to the interest level. Once again, the script is the weakness, as "Family Man" gets a bit too repetitive as it builds to its "gotcha" conclusion. But Ferguson and Collins Jr. make this one (and arguably the only one) worth checking out.

As you might be able to tell, we're horror junkies at The Deadbolt. We covered Masters of Horror back to front with set visits and reviews of each episode. So, we were more excited than most that our summer was to be filled with a weekly horror anthology series instead of ER repeats. We're not quite as excited any more. Hardcore horror fans need to check it out just to see what's up with Garris, Anderson, and Yu, but it's very unlikely to draw in anyone new to the genre and might even push some fans away. Maybe the third network will be the charm for Garris.