Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
A teenage girl living with schizophrenia begins to suspect her neighbor has kidnapped a child. Her parents try desperately to help her live a normal life, without exposing their own tragic secrets, and the only person who believes her is Caleb – a boy she isn’t even sure exists.
Fear of Rain is a serviceable psychological thriller that uses an unreliable narrator with schizophrenia as its central conceit. The premise is intriguing and the film handles mental illness with more care than most genre entries, but the execution is uneven. The acting is competent, with Katherine Heigl and Madison Iseman delivering solid performances, though nothing transcends the material. Cinematography is functional with some atmospheric touches but rarely distinctive. The narrative's mystery regarding what is real versus hallucinated is engaging mid-film, but the ending resolves in a fairly predictable fashion that undercuts the tension built up. The Caleb subplot adds some emotional texture but the overall story structure follows familiar thriller beats. Novelty is middling — the mental illness angle gives it some distinctiveness but the unreliable narrator in a thriller is well-trodden territory.