13: Fear Is Real

USA TodayRobert Bianco

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.

Entertainment WeeklyJessica Shaw

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

PopMattersCynthia Fuchs

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).

The New York TimesGinia Bellafante

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.

Philadelphia Daily NewsEllen Gray

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.

VarietyBrian 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.

Washington PostTom Shales

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.

Boston GlobeMatthew Gilbert

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.

Hollywood ReporterRay Richmond

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.