Good start, but then it gets ruined

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Overcomplicated screenplay trying to show off with too many TV twists... so as to cover up the poor quality of character writing. Spader is lost and tries to find confort by looking into his box of tricks but they don't fit since the story is going south. The only one playing right is Aidan Quinn. This isn't really a movie but a second hand TV serial quality something.

"Shadow of Fear" has some pretty good production values for a low budget direct to DVD movie. It also has some decent acting by the various participants on the screen. Unfortunately, it's hard to build any enthusiasm for the rest of the movie. The story elements and the characters are often so murky that it's hard to understand what is going on at times. It's like starting a novel at chapter 3, since a lot of the elements in the movie movie go are never explained at all. Some elements are (eventually) explained, but much of the movie remains confusing. What went wrong here? Since I find it hard to believe that production would go ahead on an incoherent screenplay, I suspect that the original cut of the movie ran a lot longer, and when the movie was subsequently cut down to run at a more reasonable length, a lot of explanation was removed. It's too bad, because there are signs that the original cut would have been engaging despite its length. You'd be better off waiting for a director's cut instead of watching the movie as it is right now.

I'm surprised this movie has got such a high rating. It starts out very promising with some nice images in the rain. In fact, it is extremely fascinating about until the time when he gets back to his wife and they begin talking. After that the movie falls apart little by little, until it becomes so borderline non-sensible that I just had to turn it off. It is not a matter of "plot twists" as some viewer suggested. Obviously, it is a question of just not being able to put a decent plot together. I see an alarming trend in the new DVD-market where many movies are put out quicker and easier to DVD than it was possible in the good old video days. American horror has suffered in recent years, and did not improve with the pathetic remakes of brilliant Asian horror. Anyway, "Shadow of Fear" is not a horror-movie. It is hardly even a movie. If it had only lasted until he got back to his wife, and she then turned into a demon or something; then it would have been a good "Twilight Zone"-episode but when a movie-plot collapses like that in one superfluous scene after the other then it becomes irrelevant to watch. As one viewer suggested, we are never told what this "organisation" does. I think, this is a major problem. On the back of the DVD it said something about a secret "cult"-organisation with big power. It sounded promising but in the movie this organisation seems completely devoid of power, so what's the point?

Harrison French(Matt Davis)is a young businessman who's career is headed for the crapper. On the way home from a gathering he accidentally runs over and kills his own brother-in-law on a rainy highway. The man to help cover up this crime is a smart and powerful attorney William Ashbury(James Spader), who is the leader of an underground society of other men of notoriety trapped in a web of fear and blackmail. These men give up every Tuesday night with no exception to meet. Caught in this devious society are lawmakers and law enforcers. Troubles can seem to disappear while under Ashbury's thumb. But sometimes a new future is able to slip away from the shadow of fear.Intense and gripping with a well thought out finale. Spader is perfect in this role. In the supporting cast: Peter Coyote, Robin Tunney, Aidan Quinn and Lacey Chabert. Kudos to Rich Cowan, director of this thinking man's thriller. Writing credits: Matthew Hollaway and Arthur Marcum.