Reviews: Lurking Fear (1994) Movie Review
Genres: Horror, Action
Subgenres: Creatures, Supernatural, Female Revenge, Lovecraftian
Horror fans searching for a breakdown of Lurking Fear (1994) will find our review covers the plot, themes, and the shocking ending everyone talks about.
Lurking Fear (1994) is a rated R 1h 16 min American independent cult action horror film that was shot in Buftea Studios, Bucharest, Romania and other parts of Romania. Lurking Fear was loosely based on H. P. Lovecraft short story titles, The Lurking Fear. The movie contains violence, creatures, psychotronic, cannibal, heart ripped out, plot twist, shooting, monsters, catfight, brother-sister relations, and explosions.
Director C. Courtney Joyner (Class of 1999 (1990), Distant Cousins (1993), Tomb of Terror (2004), Prison (1987)) failed upon executing this film. I applaud him for trying to mix horror, action, and crime but it did not work overall and gave us a somewhat boring film. Lurking Fear’s trailer portrayed the movie to be an awesome ride which it was the total opposite although the film had a professional cast, it lacked a well-written script and a good producer.
Lurking Fear revolves around ex-con John Martense (Blake Adams - Head of the Family (1996), The Killer Eye (1999), Highway 395 (2000)) who goes back to his childhood home. John was serving a sentence in jail for a crime that he did not commit. He visits Knaggs (Vincent Schiavelli - One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Batman Returns (1992), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), Amadeus (1984)) who is a family friend. Knaggs is a mortician and has been keeping half of a map for John while he had been away. The maps put together contains the location in a cemetery that John’s father hid the money that he stole during his last heist.
John was confronted by Cathryn (Ashley Laurence) and Dr. Haggis (Jeffrey Combs) at the graveyard and later by a few criminals who wishes to find the money that John’s father stole from them. Everyone knows that they want it but what they do not know is that humanoid creatures are lurking underground.
Lurking Fear is far from being a masterpiece, but was a nicely done movie with uniformly good acting, naturalistic, quite fetching settings, and had one event leading logically to the next event. I thank the choreographer for doing such a fantastic job with the pretty spot on and cohesive stunts which were top notch.
There is no shortage of graphic violence, monsters, and mediocre gore. There is not much to say about the gore except for that it was weak and the numerous dead bodies/corpses did not help the gore factor but helps with a few laughs.
The actors did a great job with their roles although the characters they play appears to be one-note who I think was just there to fill in the time slot for when the creature was not on screen. I like how well the monsters were executed, but the monsters are still unmemorable.
Sources Used to Shape This Review
Insights in this review are drawn from director interviews, fan commentary, production notes, and long-form breakdowns across genre-specific platforms. Content is written uniquely and reviewed for accuracy.
- Lurking Fear Rating Scores
- Our Score: 5/10
- Overall Score: 3.86/10
- IMDB: 4.5/10
- Rotten Tomatoes: 2.0/10
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