Fear Itself: In Sickness and In Health (2008)
*** (out of 4)
Right before her wedding stars, a woman (Maggie Lawson) receives a letter from a mysterious woman warning her that the groom (James Roday) is a serial killer. The bride to be naturally freaks out but goes ahead with the wedding but begins to fear that the note might contain the truth. Landis contributed a couple entries in the Masters of Horror series and I loved both of them but while this here is a step backwards there are still many interesting aspects. Landis has always added a lot comic relief to his horror films but that's not the case here as the director stays away from the laughs and instead tries to deliver the suspense. It's also worth noting that the director doesn't try to fall back on any gore, which is rather refreshing for a horror film of today. There are several nods to Hitchcock here and the film plays out a lot like you'd expect from him and that includes a couple twists in the story, which come out of no where and really work very well. I won't ruin the twists but they certainly caught me off guard and when I went back and thought about the clues in the film I was even more impressed at how well they worked and how well the story was put together by screenwriter Victor Salva. My biggest problem with the film was the performance by Lawson who I feel really kills the momentum in the story. She handles the scary stuff just fine but I found her to be quite annoying throughout the movie and while some of this might fall into the lap of Landis, I still found the actress to be fairly lame. Roday on the other hand delivers a very strong performance and he does a great job at building the mystery around his character that we're never quite sure what to think of him. Marshall Bell, one of my favorite character actors, is also on hand but isn't given too much to do in the role of twins.