SCARE ME Is an Incredibly Fun Horror Comedy With a Minimalist Setting – Sundance Review

I love it when I see filmmakers get creative with their stories in a minimalist setting. Writer-director Josh Ruben’s Scare Me is a horror-comedy that centers around two strangers in a cabin during a power outage, who start telling scary stories to try and freak each other out. 

While the movie doesn’t really sound like anything special, it’s actually a fantastically fun and enjoyable film that I’d like to think many of you might enjoy. The movie doesn’t rely on any major special effects. It’s just two actors hilariously acting out the scary stories that they have come up with, and the more they get into it, the more they start to interject themselves into the narrative and ideas of each other’s story. 

The two actors they got to play these roles — Josh Ruben and Aya Cash — were incredibly entertaining! They just let themselves go, and you can tell that they had a ton of fun acting out these scary stories. This looks like it would have been a wildly fun film production. If you’re a fan of comedy improv, this film is filled with it.

One of the main aspects of the film that drives it home and takes the minimalist creatively to the next level was the sound. As the two characters told their stories, there were high-end sound effects added to help bring them to life. Those sounds helped elevate the film and the creepiness of the stories being told. 

I love movies like this because it shows how much filmmakers can do with so little. As the old saying goes, sometimes less is more.

Here’s the synopsis that was shared for the movie:

Fred (Josh Ruben), a frustrated copywriter, checks in to a winter cabin to start his first novel. While jogging in the nearby woods, he meets Fanny (Aya Cash), a successful and smug young horror author who fuels his insecurities. During a power outage, Fanny challenges Fred to tell a scary story. As a storm sets in, they pass the time spinning spooky tales fueled by the tensions between them, and Fred is forced to confront his ultimate fear: Fanny is the better storyteller. The stakes are raised when they’re visited by a horror fan (Chris Redd) who delivers levity (and a pizza) to the proceedings.

Writer-director Josh Ruben’s debut feature is a metafictional horror comedy about the pleasures and perils of storytelling and the genre’s power to exorcise social demons. Scare Me is a clever and chilling hybrid of humor and horror that subverts the cabin-in-the-woods trope. Propelled by Cash and Ruben’s comedic chemistry, Scare Me ventures into darker territory, drawing dread and pathos from the gender hostilities driving Fanny and Fred’s game of ghost stories.