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Fear 3 Is Out, Let The Horror Begin
Today is a good day. Why? Shadows Of The Damned came out, and Fear 3 as well. Horror fans are going to have a busy week. Fear 3 is out on the PC, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360, and for those who don’t already know, it’s going to focus much on the 2 player co-op campaign. The game revolves around 2 brothers, Point Man and Paxton Fettel. The brothers are the spawns of their currently pregnant (potentially with a demon baby?) mother Alma.
If you head past the break you can read the features and get up to speed on the story as well as checking out some screenshots.
PRODUCT FEATURES:
Blood Runs Deep, F.E.A.R. Runs Deeper: F.E.A.R. 3 delivers all the hallmarks that define the F.E.A.R. brand: terrifying paranormal experience, frenetic combat and a dramatic storyline.
Never Face Fear Alone: F.E.A.R. 3 evolves the brand, introducing Divergent Co-op: deep, social gameplay that gives players distinctly different abilities that affect their own play as well as the experience of gamers they are playing with… or against.
Frenetic Combat: Active 360 degree cover, evolutionary slow-mo modes, scoring systems and best in class mech- combat aid players in facing an army of soldiers and paranormal enemies.
Experience the Almaverse: The game world is tainted by the Almaverse, the alternate dimension where Alma’s psychic essence subsists. New sinister and fantastical enemy creatures birthed in Alma’s warped mind spill into reality and intensify the panic.
Generative System: Proprietary technology creates random events to increase the feeling of isolation and unpredictability when playing alone or with a friend, and offers new experiences each time gamers play through.
Masters of Horror: Legendary film director John Carpenter and writer Steve Niles provide their expertise and guidance to take F.E.A.R. 3 ’s intensity to the next level. Niles co-wrote the twisted storyline that reveals the motivations and family dynamics of the main characters, and Carpenter helped craft the cinematics for maximum storytelling and fright factor.
Online Multiplayer: F.E.A.R.3 features four distinct multiplayer modes that immerse gamers in the F.E.A.R. universe. F**king Run!, Contractions, Soul Survivor and Soul King modes offer a unique combination of cooperative and competitive play and are a fresh take on multiplayer. Each mode will support up to four players and have three maps per mode available to play.
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The Story So Far
Eight months ago, Point Man and his F.E.A.R. squad were tapped to stop an unknown man who had commandeered a secret battalion of telepathically-controlled supersoldiers at the Armacham research facility in the Northwestern US city of Fairport. During the mission Point Man learned that the man wasn’t working alone. In fact, the very people Point Man was working to destroy were his telepathic, cannibalistic brother, Paxton Fettel, and his tortured and psychically powerful mother, Alma Wade—products of Armacham’s perverse paranormal experiments. Despite this revelation, Point Man moved forward with the standing F.E.A.R. team orders to stop the targets at any cost. In a last-ditch attempt to end the pair’s homicidal rampage, the F.E.A.R. team set in motion an explosive series of events that seemingly accomplished their goal but at the cost of ravaging the city, its inhabitants and almost all of Point Man’s squad mates.
For months following the blast, events in Fairport have made it clear that Alma’s psychic influence survived—and worse, her paranormal power is growing and spilling into reality. Now her supernatural agony repeatedly rocks the city as she attempts to secure the survival of her bloodline and reunite her family. Armacham’s security force remains violently focused on eliminating all evidence of the events in the city, and the remaining F.E.A.R squad carries on the mission to stop Alma.
With the chain of command broken and Point Man calling his own shots, where will his allegiance lie? With his brother Paxton Fettel, back from the dead, arriving with an unclear agenda and refusing to leave Point Man’s side? With his pregnant mother Alma and her horrifically twisted, yet immensely powerful paranormal existence? Or with his remaining F.E.A.R. squad brethren who are hell bent on saving the world, but at the cost of destroying the only blood ties Point Man has ever had?
Let’s start with the good news. Lockbox looks far better than its misleading marketing materials suggest, a supernatural horror movie so darkly lit and color graded that you’ll have to squint your way through jump scares. It’s also anchored by reliable genre performers. That’s also about where the good news ends with this rote adaptation of Knifepoint Horror Podcast story “Winthrop.”
The empathetic Carla Gugino gives her all as Ellen, a saint of a woman with boundless patience who takes on life’s hard luck with a kind smile. After giving up her career as a fashion designer to become caretaker for a dying mother, she’s then forced to reinvent herself once more when her caretaker role ends. That catches us up to the events of Lockbox, where Ellen is asked to take in a cousin she hasn’t seen in quite some time who’s dealing with severe PTSD.
Just as Ellen finally establishes a real connection with Winthrop (Lou Taylor Pucci), it’s interrupted by the arrival of peculiar neighbor Vahna (Katharine Isabelle), who spells clear trouble. When Vahna shows up dead, it sets in motion a supernatural battle of possession.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
Director Daniel Stamm (The Last Exorcism, Prey for the Devil) and screenwriter Justin Yoffe approach Lockbox in the broadest of brushstrokes, dooming it from the start with clunky storytelling and woefully underdeveloped themes of heady topics like PTSD. Winthrop is a character that comes loaded with emotional baggage and trauma that’s piled on throughout his tragic life, but much like its title, his interiority and history are treated like a tightly guarded secret meant to prolong the supernatural mystery.
The problem here, though, is that Lockbox is too sparse to sustain mystery at all, and it instead robs Winthrop of characterization. It winds up trapping the talented Pucci without anywhere to go, toggling between wounded animal and mentally disoriented.
From there, Lockbox bounds through plot developments without any sense of stakes or purpose, peppered by a smattering of haphazard paint-by-numbers jump scares. The only unwavering constant is Ellen’s resolute faith, and Stamm seems to leave it entirely to Gugino to guide confused audiences through this inconsequential story right up until its supernatural climax.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
To give more credit, Lockbox at least injects an unconventional exorcism here; just don’t expect much in the way of explanation. When the film finally reveals the meaning behind its title, it dangles a fascinating carrot it has zero interest in delivering. More than a severe lack of fleshing out its characters beyond plot drivers or devices, this faith-based flick also seems terrified to offer any worldbuilding whatsoever.
Yoffe’s script stretches the short story beyond its means instead of fleshing it out, and Stamm fills out the gaps with cheap CGI scares and overwrought performances; Isabelle’s Vahna is beyond cartoonish in her villainy. It’s also pretty nonsensical, treating only Ellen’s faith with the utmost sincerity and largely squandering its typically reliable talent. So much so that the final imagery, pure sunkissed saccharine sentimentality, leaves you with the feeling that this horror movie might be better suited as an entry in Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Lockbox releases in select theaters on July 3, 2026.
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