The Fanatic Review

August 27, 2019 at 2:02am
By Jason Stettner

This is one odd film, it’s about a stalker. This tale follows the strange, and clearly needing some sort of psychological assistance Moose (John Travolta). He’s just an obsessed individual, one that loves to collect autographs from the stars. This takes a somewhat dark turn when his favorite celebrity actor Hunter Dunbar (Devon Sawa) ditched out of a signing that he was just about near the front of.

This turns into a series of stalking situations, propelled by the weird voice over of Leah (Ana Golja). She’s also Moose’s only close friend, and she happens to grant him details for mapping out where the celebrities live. Things get weirder, and the connections become stranger. It’s less chilling, and more just straight up weird. A lot of it doesn’t make sense, and it’s just a straight up bizarre series of events.

Things go along, and there’s not much of a point to any of it. The ending is also just straight up weird, not sure what it was trying to say or put across. It becomes so stupid towards the end, and strangely gory in ways I hadn’t anticipated. There was some real potential here in terms of the concept, but it wasn’t delivered.

This wasn’t anything special to look at, scenes weren’t creatively presented. Most shots were intimate in their style, and minimal at most. There were a number of locations, but nothing too interesting to see explored.

I suppose John Travolta played his character well, definitely had the crazy attitude down which was needed. There just needed to be more depth, or well a purpose behind what he did. His opposition, the stalked was a bit of an empty character and really lacked any sort of real depth. There were other minor characters, but they weren’t explained and exist purely just to drive Moose from a shameful state to one that’s angrier in nature.

The Conclusion

The Fanatic carried a rather weak narrative with little purpose despite having a unique concept. I’d say that John Travolta’s performance as Moose was the standout here, with the character having little purpose. I get the idea as to what he was supposed to represent, but that wasn’t displayed in a very interested way. This concept of a stalker going against a celebrity should be really interesting, and rather dark. Instead, this was more cringe oriented and too direct.

There wasn’t any mystery, any sense of a creepy attitude and just a guy interacting with someone that didn’t want to see them. I didn’t quite get the point of having the narration going on, that made some elements feel cheesy. The ending was so weird as well, and I was left wondering what the point of this was. It just trailed off with a strange sort of conclusion that didn’t quite make any sense.

The Fanatic Review at Home with Streamed Viewing
Screening Provided by Katrina Wan PR

Rating Overall: 2.5