Review: Fear of Rain

Schizophrenic teenager Madison Iseman comes home from a psychiatric facility to her loving and supporting (but exhausted) parents Katherine Heigl and Harry Connick Jr. The problem is that Iseman’s schizophrenic episodes may have also come home as she starts to have hostile feelings and criminal suspicion towards her teacher (Eugenie Bondurant). Or does the teacher really have a missing kid imprisoned in her house? Israel Broussard (Who is visibly 27 years-old to Ms. Iseman’s young-looking 24) plays a nice kid at school who Iseman really likes.

 

What starts out as clichéd but fairly grounded, horribly goes off the rails quite quickly in this 2021 dud from writer-director Castille Landon (Any relation to director Christopher Landon? He made the “Happy Death Day” films co-starring Broussard). Exploring mental illness in a genre work is always a bit of a tightrope, and Landon trips and falls multiple times in this schizophrenia version of “Disturbia” (or “Rear Window” for us old folks). I’m not much of a fan of either of those two films to begin with, but the only thing this one gets right is to not focus so much on the voyeur aspect. The rest is…oof. Yes, I’m going with ‘oof’.

 

Lead actress Madison Iseman is pretty good for the first three quarters of the film, but the less credible and more histrionic things get, the more helpless it leaves Iseman (who has something) and the otherwise solid and relatable Harry Connick Jr. One scene makes you completely turn on the latter’s character, it’s unforgiveable – more importantly, it’s also not believable. It’s a moment at the service of cheesy psychological horror/thriller plotting. Further irritants are an over-abundance of ‘jump’ scares and a horribly misjudged performance by Eugenie Bondurant. She’s ridiculously overwrought and her teacher character who is still allowed in the same classroom with Iseman long past the point of any credibility. A too-old Israel Broussard is mannered and distracting, too. Katherine Heigl isn’t bad, just not especially invested.

 

I honestly feel like this film shouldn’t have been made, not if this is all the writer-director wanted to use the subject of schizophrenia for. If you want to go the schlock route, at least be more vague with the illness involved. Otherwise it comes off like the worst kind of exploitation. If the idea was to sympathise with schizophrenics, the second half of the film fails spectacularly at it.

 

No, this just won’t do. The writer-director fails to match the sincerity of Iseman and Connick Jr., taking a serious subject and surrounding it with dopey plotting and even dopier ‘jump’ scares. This one rubbed me the wrong way, especially its rather cheating biggest twist.

 

Rating: D

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