This ponderous Greek melodrama relates the misfortunes of a Greek farm family whose basic unhappiness is unendurably intensified by the misdeeds of the sexually frustrated son. Anestis, who is in his mid-20s and is neurotically driven to voyeurism and then to the grotesque rape of the family's deaf-mute maidservant, whom he afterwards murders. Apart from the unhappily wed parents there is a pretty young sister who is confronted with the tragedy when she returns from boarding school. The contrast between the brother, who is a borderline sociopath, and the very normal sister forms a prolonged tension in the movie's second half, where her marriage, the only happy point of the film, is ultimately juxtaposed with the after effects of the murder. The movie is carefully structured to be hard-hitting but is mostly overwrought melodrama.
Review of The Fear
