A Fantastic Fear Of Everything

In the upcoming A Fantastic Fear Of Everything, Simon Pegg takes a break from playing pop culture trivia with Nick Frost and Edgar Wright for an altogether different kind of stylized silliness. Written by former Kula Shaker frontman Crispian Mills, who co-directs with Radiohead music video helmer Chris Hopewell, Fantastic brings a surrealist slant to the story of Pegg (in Mick Hucknall hair, to add another later of British music reference) playing a children’s book author whose research into Victorian-era murders has made him an agoraphobic, emotional wreck. Pegg finally gets up the courage to leave his house at the urging of his ex-wife’s ghost and his pirate-hat-wearing psychiatrist, only to have all his paranoia validated by becoming the target of an actual serial killer. Ragged animated hedgehogs, wee British children with sad balloons, mouths with eyeballs in them, and Pegg’s dingy underpants add to the spooky absurdities in this film that looks like Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Guillermo del Toro, and Michel Gondry had a quirky, creepy baby.