Review: There's much to dread in 'A Fantastic Fear of Everything'

But the dreary, loud, amateurish horror-comedy “A Fantastic Fear of Everything” starring Simon Pegg as said author, isn’t terribly interested in logic. Or continuity. Or filmmaking acumen. Or, most glaringly, laughs.

Writer/director Crispian Mills, a rock musician making his feature directing debut, starts with an interminable set-up in which a bushy-haired Pegg -- in bathrobe and briefs and evincing a sort of reverse charm from his engaging turns in pal Edgar Wright’s movies (“Shaun of the Dead,” “The World’s End”) -- freaks out alone while never letting go of a carving knife. That’s followed by a head-scratchingly unfunny sequence in which he faces his deep distress about washing his clothes at the local launderette (where a few queasy racial stereotypes await).