NOTHING LEFT TO FEAR (2013) Movie Review

This review of Nothing Left to Fear is more of a warning than anything else. The film is your standard concept of a terror/possession story but delivered in a very long and drawn out fashion. The film is 1 hour and 44 minutes, but half of that time felt like the director’s effort to create an artistic take on a horror film. And failing.

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Horror Films on Amazon.

Nothing Left to Fear is “inspired” by the legend of the Stull, Kansas cemetery which is reputed to be one of the seven gates of hell. The film stars Anne Heche, James Tupper, Ethan Peck, Rebekah Brandes and Clancy Brown. The film is directed by Anthony Leonardi III. His directorial resume includes … oh wait, this is his feature length directorial debut. His other credits come from his experience as a storyboard artist for Kong Skull Island, The Jungle Book, The Last Witch Hunter, and other box office films.

The really short synopsis says “A family’s journey toward a better life is interrupted by an unstable man of the cloth.” OR they could have said “A pastor (James Tupper) his wife (Anne Heche) and their daughters encounter malevolent forces in a small Kansas town.” No matter how it’s put, they take a long time to do it.

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First up, Ann Heche and James Tupper are more relegated to second tier characters as the story focuses on the younger cast members. Of course anytime you see Clancy Brown in a film, you know, it’s almost a spoiler.



The film starts out real slow and the pacing never really changes, even when the evil raises its head and starts devouring. It’s still the same pacing.

The other problem is that the director seemed to choose the same melodramatic background music for almost the entire film, and that in itself is a distracting and horrible choice of the doldrums.

Then there’s the monster/evil, who seems to only walk at about 1 mile an hour, but manages to always catch up to whoever it’s pursuing.

And the monster itself, while trying to act all creepy and what not, walking and stalking, but really delivers nothing new or even on par with some of the other scary haunted spirit films where the entity walks like a crab, backwards, with its neck askew. Nah, there’s none of that. Well, there’s a weak attempt at looking creepy, but it more or less fails.

The first half of the film is slow but good while they set up the situation for the evil to step up, then it becomes rather boring and predictable from there. From all the off pacing and predictability, I understand why the film got a 4.4/10 on IMDb and a whopping 8% on Rotten Tomatoes.

So if you’re bored and there’s nothing else on and you HAVE TO WATCH TV, then go ahead and check it out. The visuals are nice to digest.

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