MOVIE REVIEW

Less is more in this art-house thrill ride.

By Kevin Thomas, Times Staff Writer

"Fear X" is a compelling psychological suspense drama made in a rigorous minimalist mode that represents a potent offbeat collaboration among its star, John Turturro, Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn and the late cult novelist Hubert Selby Jr., with key mood-setting contributions from cinematographer Larry Smith, a longtime Stanley Kubrick colleague, and composers Brian Eno and J. Peter Schwalm. "Fear X" is an example of the scary movie as an art film. With an elliptical style and open-ended interpretations, it is definitely not for those who like their mysteries spelled out and tied up neatly.

Turturro excels at uptight ordinary guys, and "Fear X" provides him with a splendid opportunity as Harry Cain, a Wisconsin shopping mall security guard whose pregnant wife is shot to death in the mall's parking structure when she comes to meet him at the end of his shift. Harry is so shocked and devastated that life has all but stopped for him, and he becomes obsessed with trying to track down her killer. A mild man at heart, he does not seek revenge but cannot rest until he knows why she was killed.

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Yet Harry is getting nowhere until the police tell him that they have new evidence — a blurry surveillance-camera image of the murderer, which so stirs him up that he at last becomes curious about the empty house across the street from him. On the pretext that he would like to move and rent it himself, he is surprised to learn that it is already rented by some corporation. Breaking and entering, in an exceptionally tense sequence, he finds a strip of photo negatives with enough information — but not necessarily actual clues — to send him off to a small city in Montana.

"Fear X" is highly evocative in expressing Harry's mounting desperation and paranoia as he takes on an investigation of his wife's murder with seemingly next to nothing to go on. The film is filled with nondescript, impersonal and underpopulated locales that emphasize Harry's isolation. His quest could scarcely seem more tenuous, but the course it takes is wholly unpredictable and wholly unexpected in its consequences.

"Fear X" is barely credible, but in the hands of the film's dedicated minimalists, "barely" is enough, and they turn the precious little they have to work with into a plus. Although Turturro is pretty much the whole picture, he gets some major support from James Remar, a man as distraught as he is, with Deborah Kara Unger seen briefly but effectively as Remar's wife.

'Fear X'

MPAA rating: PG-13 for intense thematic material

Times guidelines: Too intense for children

John Turturro...Harry Cain

James Remar...Lt. Peter Northrop

Deborah Kara Unger...Kate Northrop

Steven McIntyre...Phil

Mark Houghton...Diner cop

A Silver Nitrate release of Verve Pictures/Movie House Entertainment presentation of an NWR ApS/FearX Ltd. co-production. Director Nicolas Winding Refn. Producer Henrik Danstrup. Executive producers Donald C. Archbold, Joseph Newton Cohen, Gary Phillips, Kenneth D. Plummer, Nadia Redler, Mark Vennis. Screenplay by Hubert Selby Jr. and Refn. Cinematographer Larry Smith. Editor Anne Sterud. Music Brian Eno and J. Peter Schwalm. Costumes Darena Snowe. Production designer Peter De Neergaard. Set decorator Stephen Arndt. Running time: 1 hour, 31 minutes. Exclusively at the Fairfax Cinemas, 7907 Beverly Blvd. (at Fairfax Avenue), (323) 655-4010.