A Reflection of Fear

Renowned cinematographer William A. Fraker, perhaps most well known for Rosemary’s Baby, naturally hired one of the best—Laszlo Kovacs—to shoot his own film A Reflection of Fear, the second of his three features, and his only directorial venture into horror. Their collaboration resulted in a transfixing work with an unusual, dream-like look, as if filtered through fog, and a spectacularly cinematic setting: a sprawling desolate estate house where 16-year-old Marguerite (Sondra Locke) lives with her overbearing mother (Mary Ure). A severely troubled science geek whose closest confidantes are her creepy dolls, Marguerite desperately yearns for her absentee father (Robert Shaw), but when her wishes come true and he suddenly shows up with his girlfriend (Sally Kellerman), his presence throws the all-female household seriously off kilter. Things are not what they seem to be; and people soon start turning up dead. A Reflection of Fear is a genuinely unsettling Gothic psycho-thriller that relies mostly on sheer dread-filled atmosphere (in part because the film was notoriously censored to secure a PG rating) to slowly get under your skin—and stay there for a long time to come.