Season of Fear (R)

State of Fear must have been a description of exhibitors' reaction to "Season of Fear," a very odd film that looks like a segment of HBO's "The Hitchhiker" series stretched out to feature length. This may explain its "limited engagement" at the K-B Foundry and its equally limited prospects before it finds a natural home as postmidnight filler on assorted premium cable services.

It barely helps that "Season of Fear" is beautiful to watch: Set in the widest-open spaces of the Midwestern heartland, the film has been gorgeously photographed, like "Bagdad Cafe" without filters. What little sense there is to the plot revolves around a father's late-blooming attempts to rekindle his relationship with a son abandoned 20 years earlier; said son's quickly blooming relationship with the young temptress who turns out to be Stepma; and the inevitable problems as they try to manage a` trois.

Those parts make sense in a cliche'd manner, but director Doug Campbell (who also wrote the original story and did the screenplay) eventually complicates things so much that at the end, when the film's only five characters (all somehow related) have been shot and are writhing in the dirt at dusk, you may well ask yourself something along the lines of "Huh?"

Stepma Sarah (Clare Wren) turns out to be the proverbial good time had by all, and Michael J. Pollard does his usual disheveled cameo, but the real star of "Season of Fear" is the astounding country house where most of the action takes place. Airy, well-appointed, chic, it would be equally at home in Architectural Digest and Playhouse, and it will stay with you long after its inhabitants have vacated the fatuous premise of this film.

"Season of Fear" is rated R and contains some nudity and violence.

Copyright The Washington Post

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