'Fear' (R)

Top of This Movie Page 'Fear': A Date With DisasterBy Hal HinsonWashington Post Staff WriterApril 12, 1996James Foley's "Fear" is a thriller designed to scare the hide off every parent of a teenage girl in America. Starring Mark Wahlberg and William Petersen, it's a cautionary tale about casual sex with the wrong guy. It plays as if Foley-and screenwriter Christopher Crowe-were trying to remake "Cape Fear" as a dating movie. The Max Cady figure here is David (Wahlhberg, a k a Marky Mark), a soft-spoken, seemingly innocent boy who meets the 17-year-old Nicole (Reese Witherspoon) in a downtown Seattle club. Immediately the teenagers fall in love. Later, when Nicole introduces him to her dad (Petersen) and stepmom (Amy Brenneman), David handily wins them over with a display of flattery so lavish it would have made Eddie Haskell envious.Nevertheless, Dad gets an inkling that something is wrong with this kid, something off. Actually, Dad has been trying to deal with some issues of his own l...