Fred (Josh Ruben) is a writer, but he likes to think of himself as a writer-director-actor, even if he has not made huge strides forward in his career so far, in any of those categories. To force himself to apply his nose to the grindstone, he hires a cabin in the middle of a snowy nowhere to write in, and after a car journey there driven by the helpful owner who insists on chatting to him when he plainly wants to doze, he is firmly ensconced in the confines of the cabin with only his laptop for company and a single idea - werewolves with guns - to build on. However, this is no good when inspiration refuses to strike, and so he decides to opt for a run instead, which is where he meets Fanny (Aya Cash), who has sprained her knee running. But she is a writer too...
The matter of plagiarism weighed heavily on the mind of Fred in Scare Me, and it cynically developed into the age-old question asked of writers, "Where do you get your ideas?", the answer being all too often, "Other writers." Or at least, other people in their lives, merrily picking and choosing from various experiences around them to adapt into their work; Fred thinks Fanny is so clever for managing to attain a bestselling horror novel, and this breeds an unhealthy jealousy in him, but this was a film determined to bring everyone down a peg or two. While fan fiction is regarded as the lowest form of creativity, especially if you upload vast amounts of it to your website or online presence, this made the case that all genre fiction, possibly even all fiction full stop, was a variation on it.
Now, not every writer was going to go along with writer-director-actor Josh Ruben's concept, despite his "search your feelings... you know it to be true" half-jokey, half needling tone here, but there was an interest in how stories are constructed in this that resulted in a series of sequences of Fred and Fanny sitting out a power cut in their cabins by telling each other scary stories by the fireside. This served two purposes, one, it illustrated the overarching theme of how one story is born from another in a neverending cycle, and two, it kept the budget down since while it was technically an anthology of horror tales we were getting, they were all spoken and not really accompanied by pictures, aside from the odd werewolf claw or creative use of lighting. For that reason, the piece did resemble a filmed play for long stretches, which is not everyone's cup of tea.
Luckily the performances were strong, considering it was basically a two-hander for much of the time: comedian Chris Redd showed up belatedly as a pizza guy and Fanny fan (well, he enthuses over her book) to give the principals someone to bounce off for a while. But there was another theme here, one of misogyny, the point of this night of scary stories is to frighten the listener, yet Fanny is too knowledgeable to be truly surprised by anything Fred conjures up, and that brings out his latent woman hating tendencies. This was relevant because while he cannot scare her with his hackneyed yarn about a werewolf, he can disturb her by admitting his ex-girlfriend has taken a protection order out against him, and before the film is over, he will have had to admit to his seething hatred of the idea of any woman getting the best of him. The problem arrives when he embraces it. While there was a sense of watching an improv theatre workshop about Scare Me, it did have some decent jokes and slickly made its point about what’s scary in real life (aggressive male entitlement, but also someone doing what you aspire to far better than you could dream of and how that can twist you - and them - inside). It was only a pity it didn't know where to stop.
[Shudder release this on Blu-ray with the following special features:
Director & Cinematographer Commentary
Interviews with the cast
Behind the Scenes photo gallery
MAKE COOL SH!T Podcast Episode #1: Scare Me
Outtakes
Feel the Music, Feel The Light music video.]
