4 out of 5

Director: Episodic

Not exactly four stars, but its important to draw a line between this and the Masters of Horror series that spawned it. Fear Itself is a horror anthology, each episode giving a notable or upcoming director the chance to spin a scary or gory tale. And for its 13 episodes, Fear is as top-notch as can be expected. Horror is a tough genre, especially with how glutted it is, and 40 minutes can be tough to tell the story you want to tell. So the most you can expect, reasonably, is a good premise and an effective showing of that premise. On those standards, Fear mostly goes above and beyond. Highlighting episodes is difficult because they all have great elements to them – even Ernest Dickersons more comedic entry is a lot of fun, and although The Circle unwisely uses CGI, its still a good story. There are some disappointments – Mary Harrons entry is overly wooden, and Bousmans New Years Day is like a student film that uses his film techniques, with a pretty lame Steve Niles story to make it more generic. (Okay, that episode was probably a low point.) But on the whole, itd be great to have a series like this, that isnt afraid to do the actual horror thing of not having a good ending and to also spray blood on some well-knowns. Its like Tales from the Crypt w/o the general levity. Sadly, it only lasted one season, one more than the generally dispiriting MOH series from which it came… And that comparison is important. Somehow, moved to a non-cable station, with time and censorship limitations, and given to more non-horror luminaries to direct, this series ended up being infinitely better… perhaps the limitations worked in their favor. Horror fans shouldve stuck by this so that we couldve had an ongoing horror series to sit down to every week.