• Network:
  • Series Premiere Date: Jan 7, 2009
  • Season #: 1
13 Fear Is Real Image

Generally unfavorable reviews - based on 9 Critics What's this?

User Score

Mixed or average reviews- based on 8 Ratings

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  • Summary: Contestants try to conquer their fears in the bid to win $66,666 in this Sam Raimi-produced show.
  • Genre(s): Game Show
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 9
  2. Negative: 6 out of 9
  1. 50
    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.
  2. Reviewed by: Jessica Shaw
    Watching them tied up for a find-your-partner challenge is more absurd than scary.
  3. 40
    The show is, in various ways, just such a trick, not quite convincing viewers that its shtick is authentic, but granting that those viewers get the joke (and will forgive, and even enjoy, the cheesy results).
  4. I've yet to see proof that "reality" television itself kills anything but brain cells. Which would seem to make the CW's latest entry, 13 - Fear Is Real, pretty pointless.
  5. Reviewed by: Brian Lowry
    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.
  6. 30
    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.
  7. 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.

See all 9 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of
  2. Mixed: 0 out of
  3. Negative: 0 out of