Premieres tonight at 8 p.m. ET on the CW
That *beep*, *beep*, *beep* sound you’re hearing is the dumptruck full of money backing into Sam Raimi’s driveway. Raimi is the most prominent of a host of producers on the CW’s new reality show 13: Fear Is Real, and I’m guessing the amount of time he’s spent laboring over it is roughly equal to the time I’m going to spend writing this review. Anyone pining for the Evil Dead 2 of reality television—if such a thing is even conceivable—will have their hopes dashed quickly and repeatedly throughout this labored hour of cheesy atmospherics and sub-Survivor scheming.
Borrowing shamelessly from The Blair Witch Project and the Saw movies, the show dumps 13 “guests” into a dilapidated cabin in the middle of the Louisiana bayou. (The accommodations are supposed to be the furthest thing from the lavishly appointed digs on the network’s America’s Next Top Model, though it’s a toss-up on which décor is scarier: The shack with the dried blood and cobwebs on the walls or the house plastered with blown-up Tyra Banks cover photos.) Each week, a guest will be “killed off” until the last one standing takes home a terrifying prize: $66,666. (The final figure will no doubt seem less devilish once taxes are deducted.) Their nemesis is a sinister Jigsaw-esque puppetmaster who goes by the name “Mastermind,” and communicates via microcassette messages, hidden amplifiers, and cryptic notes composed of clip-out lettering. Mastermind and his minions present them with various challenges designed to prey on their biggest fears, and the losers of these challenges are forced to go head-to-head in the “execution ceremony.”
The first night has all but one of them pairing off into teams. (The one who agrees to stay back at the cabin, a mohawked horror nut named Cody, is given a pass for his bravery.) Half of them are blindfolded, strapped to chairs, and hidden in the woods; the other half are tasked to find their partners, free them, and bring them back to the road. The last-place finishers are pitted against each other in the execution ceremony, where one of them will go home. A lot of Blair Witch first-person flashlight action ensues, though no one seems frightened so much as mildly inconvenienced.