13 Fear Is Real

As games go, this isn't a bad one. But unlike horror movies, the Fear doesn't feel real, and the show is nothing special.

Watching them tied up for a find-your-partner challenge is more absurd than scary.

13: Fear Is Real is cruel in its premise, drably inevitable in its concept and supremely dull in execution. No one risks being scared to death, but being bored to death seems a credible threat.

Even nightvision lenses and up-the-nose video, however, can't create a real sense of jeopardy until the final challenge, when two finalists are "buried alive." At least that's semi-interesting, though until then 13 is pretty much a snooze--more scatter-brained than scary.

13 Fear Is Real, a fizzled effort at scaremongering, reveals just how badly reality television can go astray when the casting fails to be creative.

Fear Is Real is the dripping-with-irony title of a CW-staged unscripted venture that scarcely could be more fake, a collection of preposterous snapshots of 13 young people trying their best to scream rather than laugh.

Watching 13 - Fear Is Real, I was, like, shaking, too, from giggling at the awesome flimsiness of this new horror reality show--when I wasn't bored out of my skull, that is.