Slacker Mike (Ryan Kauffman) throws a party for his best friend David
(Matthew Ewald), mainly so that clean-cut David can finally muster up
enough courage to chat up Cindy (Mariah Smith) - but that horribly
backfires because Cindy has always though he's a freak, and she humiliates
David in front of everyone. That's not the worst thing by far though, the
worst thing is that all the party guests and Mike's sister Debbie (Addy
Miller) are sucked into a parallel dimension called Fearworld, a
dimension where everybody has to face his or her worst fears ... and more
often than not die as well. Now Mike and David want to save their
friends and especially Debbie of course, but who knows how? Dar (James
'Ike' Eichling), that's who ... who is of course also the guy Mike stole
the VHS tape that opened to gateway to Fearworld from. He tells them David
is actually a Fearfighter, and one of the very few people who has the
ability to kill the Fearmaster (Jarod Kearney) and thus free the others
(provided they're still alive). So David and Ryan and their uncourageous
but strong-like-an-ox friend Max (Kurt Skarstedt) enter Fearworld, and on
their way to the Fearmaster they are drawn into one horror scenario after
the other, scenarios that include zombies, werewolves, vampires, possessed
kids and whatnot, and which they have to master alone or with each other,
always running the risk to be killed though. On their way through this
world, David finds a new love in Heather (Elle Clark), which is cool, but
the Fearmaster soon enough makes her his hostage, just like Debbie ...
just because he likes to be cruel. Will our heroes defeat the
Fearmaster? Will they save the girls? Will they even survive everything
that's thrown at them? And if so, will all of this solve anything or only
throw them into the next fear-scenario? Director John Johnson plays a
cop who has been sucked into the Fearworld without the slightest idea what
is boing on. In a nod to Ed Wood, this cop has been christened Kelton. FearFighter
is dubbed an "interactive horror movie game" - but let me
reassure all the non-gamer readers of this site that this is not a video
game in the usual sort of the way, more of a "choose your own
story"-type of film. But what should win the traditional movie
watchers over for this one is that whichever way you watch it, it feels
like an actual (and compact) movie. Sure, it's a bit on the episodic side,
but even that makes sense considering the basic premise. And on the other
hand, despite the episodic structure, the movie has a proper buildup and
is carried by strong characters. Now add to this a very light-footed
narrative approach, plenty of nods to horror films from the past
(especially the 80's low budget variety comes to mind), and of course a
healthy portion of self irony, and you've got yourself a nice piece of
genre entertainment! If all of this has gotten you interested,
you might want to check out the movie(-game) here: http://www.flicksphere.com/store/fear-fighter-synopsis/
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