A Fantastic Fear of Everything is a 2012 British horror-comedy film, directed by Crispian Mills and Chris Hopewell, and starring Simon Pegg.
It follows Jack, a writer who has developed a crippling fear of being murdered while trying to write Decades of Death, a television serial about Victorian Era serial killers. After being invited to meet Harvey Humphries, a BBC head of scripts interested in his teleplays, Jack must face the world and another crippling fear of his, the laundrette.
Heavily inspired by Victorian Gothic Horror, this low budget film is borderline surreal in parts, even featuring a 3 minute stop motion sequence at one point.
This film contains examples of:
- Loser Protagonist: Jack is a coward who's afraid of everything.
- Love at First Sight: Jack falls in love with Sangeet as soon as she walks into the laundrette.
- Missing Mom: Jack was abandoned by his mother as young boy, in a laundrette, which explains his irrational fear of them. In fact, it turns out to be the very launderette that he has to visit in the present day.
- Nervous Wreck: Jack begins as one of these, and gradually overcomes his fears over the course of the film.
- The Paranoiac: Jack's paranoia reaches such a point that he's afraid to answer the phone or open the front door.
- Serial Killer: Jack spends his time studying these people.
- Talking to Themself: Jack does this often, either trying to reassure himself, or convincing himself that he is indeed about to be murdered.
- Troubled Fetal Position: When he calls his shrink, Dr Friedkin, about having to face the laundrette, Jack is in this postion.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Jack considers going to the laundrette to be a very last resort, but when he finds he has no clean clothes for his meeting with Harvey Humphries, it becomes his only option.
