"Fear of Rain" sensitively played by Iseman but always a few steps behind viewer

Fear of Rain (2021)


Being inaccurately sold as a horror film, “Fear of Rain” uses its nightmarish gotcha moments more as window dressing to a psychological drama about mental illness. In fact, writer-director Castille Landon’s film is more skillful during its sensitive, more intimate moments when it takes a break from being a paranoid girl-who-cried-wolf thriller. Unfortunately, the viewer is always a few steps ahead of a nagging, thuddingly obvious story reveal that's secondary but still significant to the film’s central mystery. Despite the dedication of its cast to distract from the contrived gimmicks of the script, “Fear of Rain” is mildly insulting and grows repetitive.


Florida teen Rain Burroughs (Madison Iseman) lives with schizophrenia. When she goes off her psychotic medication to feel less like a zombie, Rain has an episode where she isn’t sure if being chased by a man through the woods and then being buried alive is real or an hallucination. She just has to ask herself three questions: “Is this possible? Could it exist here? Is anyone else reacting?” The experience proves to just be in Rain’s head, but Rain has the support of doctors and her parents, John (Harry Connick Jr.) and Michelle (Katherine Heigl). Going back to school is even more of a struggle, being stigmatized by girls who used to be her friends, until she meets nice guy Caleb (Israel Broussard). At first she doesn’t tell him about her diagnosis and the voices she sometimes hears, but Caleb will soon come to the aid of Rain when she suspects their strange teacher Miss McConnell (Eugenie Bondurant), also her next door neighbor, is holding a young girl captive in her attic. Are her accusations real this time?


Knowing her way around the horror genre, Madison Iseman (2020’s “Nocturne”) is emotionally available, giving Rain an inner life and immediately getting us on her side. Harry Connick Jr. does solid work as Rain’s father, while Katherine Heigl (who oddly receives top billing) gives off a soft, warm glow as Rain’s sundress-wearing mother, who is never naturally used. Though Israel Broussard is likable as Caleb, he is basically playing the same role as he has in the “Happy Death Day” films with a cracked smirk. In a cast of bigger names, Eugenie Bondurant (2015’s “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2”) might make the most impression. Using her natural height and angular features to her advantage, Bondurant is understatedly creepy, but not without sympathy, as Miss McConnell, who’s like a live-action version of the Other Mother in “Coraline.” 


“Fear of Rain” tries to throw the viewer off, making one not know what to believe (complete with whispers on the soundtrack and swirling camerawork), but it can only really go one of two ways in the end. To all of the psychic geniuses who figured out the big twist in “The Sixth Sense” well before all was revealed, it takes no more than ten minutes for those paying attention to figure out the long game here. All one can do then is wait around for the script to catch up. If one employs Rain’s own checklist of questions to determine what is real or not—visually conveyed as text scribbled on the screen—it doesn't take much to quickly realize the film's sleight of hand. As for the mystery of whether Miss McConnell is a child kidnapper or not, there is some urgency and suspense late in the film when Rain successfully breaks into her home, but even that payoff, or lack thereof, feels like a lazily half-baked, ultimately unsatisfying “Disturbia.” The last few moments then strive for poignancy and nearly earn it. While it’s a lovely sentiment on which to send us out, getting there has been kind of hokey.


Grade: C


Lionsgate is releasing “Fear of Rain” (104 min.) on digital, on demand, and in select theaters on February 12, 2021, followed by a Blu-ray and DVD release on February 16, 2021.

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