Simon Pegg is a cooky fellow. It's not surprising that he's taken on the role in A Fantastic Fear of Everything. Jack is his weirdest character to date. Pegg owns his character, moulding the story around his subversive behaviour. He's in too deep with his work, researching notorious serial killers for his book freaks him out to no end. A film-maker shows interest in his work, and a meeting's arranged. Jack must face the outside world in preparation for his big moment. Pegg and the team behind the scenes manage to turn a boring narrative into an intriguing one. Pegg spends the second third of AFFoE in a launderette, suspicious of fellow launderette-ers and in need of a beginners guide to washing clothes. This won't be for everyone. The comedy's dry. The story's far-fetched and at times, drags. Pegg maybe exceptional enough to see you through to the bitter end, or lager end.

"A Fantastic Fear of Everything" has some very strong elements. The performances are good, especially by the versatile Simon Pegg, Paul Freeman and Amara Karan. The production design is stylish and detailed. Cinematography is good, although marred by a few shots that could have been a bit steadier. However, it is a dark comedy that is neither particularly dark nor particularly funny. It is more absurd than comedic and suffers from a weak structure. Pegg plays a man who spends most of his time running around in his skivvies, but is embarrassed to wash them at a Laundromat, which is either ironic or absurd, but not very amusing and certainly not sufficiently amusing for the amount of time and attention devoted to the gag. At the beginning of the film, he is driven by his phobias to the point of insanity, so has no place to go dramatically. Consequently, much of the first half is at a single tone, despite plot developments that elevate the stakes. While Pegg is usually affable in his comedic and dramatic roles, it's difficult to sympathize with an unkempt misanthropic underachiever who is paralyzed by irrational fears. Pegg must come to grips with his phobias before they destroy him, but also learns that his phobias are not entirely unfounded, although they are not realized in the way he expects. Consequently, he is struggling with both inner demons and outer demons, but we're not sure they belong in the same film. He must also break out of his shell, become a human being, find love, and succeed as either a children's writer or a chronicler of historical crimes. And he must survive increasingly absurd and perilous predicaments created by his own follies and phobias and the homicidal designs of an actual murderer. The story is all over the place. When he achieves a measure of success at the end, we're not quite certain he has earned it, despite the many perils he confronted. While he finds a moral for his own life, his circumstances are so unorthodox and unique, that moral doesn't seem relevant to anybody else.

First of all, the movie had little to no connection to panphobia, the fear everything. The protagonist just had a little paranoia.The movie seemed to go nowhere from the start, and was just making time for the "climax". The first hour just shows Simon Pegg being an annoying paranoid yelling, talking to himself, being a nut and being scared all the time. It would've just been a short, if the whole movie could've been cut and editing and it could've been a good short movie.The first 2/3 of the movie is garbage, but the last 30mn was not bad. It even has a nice motif that "connects" the protagonist to the villain.I might not watch this movie ever again, sitting through the first hour of the movie was painful.6/10

At first I found it cringe worthy but yet intriguing, then I started to laugh out loud when I stared to sympathize and relate to the issues at hand, then I got confused, then I laughed some more, and then I was happily surprised...Not bad reaction for one film, I think the scenery was great and the character very likable, the narration was great.At some points it was a little to much but that is to be expected, i think I could have been toned down slightly at some points, where it seemed to want to tick some sort of "we need this in the film to make it palatable" tick-box.