Director – Anthony Leonardi III, Screenplay – Jonathan W.C. Mills, Producers – Todd Dagres, Rob Eric, Alison Palmer, Slash & Michael Williams, Photography – Martin Coppen, Music – Nicholas O’Toole & Slash, Visual Effects – Prime Focus Ltd. (Supervisor – Shaily Swankar), Makeup/Creature Effects – Mike Elizalde’s Spectral Motion (Supervisor – Mike Elizalde), Production Design – Deborah Riley. Production Company – Slasher Films/Movie Package Company/Prime Focus Ltd./Midlife Crisis Productions/Pitfan Productions Ltd./Upload Films.
Cast
Rebekah Brandes (Rebecca Bramford), Ethan Peck (Noah), James Tupper (Pastor Dan Bramford), Anne Heche (Wendy Bramford), Clancy Brown (Pastor Kingsman), Jennifer Stone (Mary Bramford), Carter Cabassa (Christopher Bamford), Wayne Pere (Mason)
Plot
Dan Bramford, his wife Wendy and their three children move to the town of Stull so that Dan can take up a position as the new pastor. They are given a welcome by the retiring pastor Kingsman. Dan’s eldest daughter Rebecca immediately connects and starts going out with Kingsman’s adopted son Noah. However, what the Bramfords are not aware is that the locals have drawn them there for a sinister purpose.
Nothing Left to Fear was a film produced by Slash, the guitarist of Guns ‘n’ Roses fame, who is apparently a big horror movie fan. It is produced via his production company Slasher Films, while Slash also co-writes the score. It is the only film to date from Slasher films, although Slash did later go on to produce the horror film The Breach (2023).
Nothing Left to Fearis also the only feature film to date directed by Anthony Leonardi III, who in his day job works as a storyboard artist, including a stint as concept artist on tv’s Game of Thrones (2011-9) and storyboards for The Jungle Book (2016), Kong: Skull Island (2017) and Avengers Endgame (2019), among others. Leonardi had also worked as a tv and music video director, including directing videos for Slash’s solo work.
I wasn’t sure which way to take Nothing Left to Fear as it started. The capsule synopsis suggested that it was a plot about a newly arrived family in town facing a series of mysterious assaults, maybe something along the lines of The Evictors (1979), Them (2006) or even The Watcher (2022). This doesn’t quite turn out to be the case. In fact, it is not even a film about a family under attack. James Tupper’s pastor quickly drops into the background, while top-billed Anne Heche, who plays the wife, is largely a supporting character. Instead, the forefront of the film is inhabited by Rebekah Brandes playing the pastor’s teenage daughter and a then unknown Ethan Peck as the handsome local boy she dallies with.
Rebekah Brandes and Ethan Peck
Ominously, the first jumps that Anthony Leonardi III delivers are dream jumps, which are always the sign of a film that is throwing something randomly spooky in early in the show because it has nothing else in its arsenal. Indeed, during the first half of the film, what you are drawn by is the beautiful Rebekah Brandes and the handsome sincerity projected by Ethan Peck as he woos her. These scenes could easily make for a regular romantic Coming of Age story as opposed to anything you expect of a horror film.
On the other hand, Nothing Left to Fear becomes far less interesting during the second half, when it starts to play its horror element out and the main twist about what is going comes out of the bag. This involves assorted runnings around the town pursued by a phantom shadowy figure. It is quite dull and clichéd stuff, not the least of which is when it comes to the twist ending that has been set up.
[PLOT SPOILERS] Moreover, the film comes with a frustrating vagueness in the script department about what the group are actually facing. There is talk of the townspeople guarding some kind of portal preventing an entity from escaping, which suggests something that falls into the realm of Lovecraftian Horrors, while the whole aspect of the family being selected as Human Sacrifices takes the film very much in the direction of The Wicker Man (1973), but none of this plays out in any interesting way.
