Between Producing and Directing, Deon Taylor has had such an eclectic career helming projects like the 2016 comedy 'Meet The Blacks', the coming of ages love story between a young man and his pride in 'Kicks' the socially conscious, 'Traffik' and the too real 'Black and Blue'.
However, the magic behind Taylor's work is his ability to balance things between message and entertainment. You may at times walk away saying to yourself "That film was damn good film" way before pondering in your own thoughts about the underlaying message of the story. That right there is the cherry on top of casually starting these much needed conversations.
This time Taylor focus' on 'FEAR' and the understanding of it during a time when the entire world, whether they want to admit it or not, were face to face with it daily. We had a chance to catch up with Director Deon Taylor and the cast to get a better understanding about FEAR and how this concept and cast came together.
When this whole pandemic thing started, and there was no conversation about what it was it was only what was happening to us. We were all in fear.
Taylor says and continues...,
We witnessed the world stop and at that moment, we also had a moment where we had the George Floyd thing where it was civil unrest. So we was at a time there were between the pandemic civil unrest if you weren't afraid or worried or like yo, I was worried about all kinds of stuff at that time. And that's where it birthed from me.
The entire film was shot during 2020, in a secluded cabin on the west coast and follows a group of friends, Jospeh Sikora (Power), Annie Ilonzeh (Peppermint), Terrance Jenkins (Think Like A Man, Ruby Modine (Happy Death Day), Andrew 'King Bach' Bachelor (The Babysitter) and T.I. Tip Harris (Takers, ATL), on a much needed vacation weekend that turns into phycological and deadly getaway.
On the surface, FEAR serves as a delicious creepy sauce for the average horror buff, completed with a side of jump scares, disturbing images and juicy gore. But there is in fact an overall method to the madness of Taylor's FEAR
Taylor elaborates on his masterful plan to cast primarily "Alpha Males" as he put it, it his vision.
The entire cast is alpha males. Yeah. Including myself. And yeah, what we're dealing with is a conversation piece when you get done screaming and yelling the conversation piece is about really being honest with yourself. About what's making you stop in life. What are you really afraid of? Doesn’t matter how tough you are, how many times you've been to jail, how many people you know. What is stopping you? And that's fear man.
You can catch FEAR in theaters January 27th!