One out of
Five stars
Running time:
101 mins
Amazingly inept “horror” movie in which the acting, script and plot are all ten times more horrific than anything else in the film.
Director William Malone previously made the disappointing remake of The House On Haunted Hill, so he’s no stranger to Ten Worst Movies Of The Year lists and feardotcom is a highly probable addition to the roster for 2003.
Er…Killer Website
Basically, it’s The Ring, only with a website instead of a videotape. Woooo. Stephen Dorff and Natascha McElhone play two entirely forgettable characters who stumble upon a website called feardotcom, which kills people in nasty Ebola virus fashion (blood spurting from eyes etc) 48 hours after they log on. Perhaps it’s all a thinly-veiled allegory about The Evils of Internet Porn?
The website turns out to have something to do with Evil Serial Killer
Stephen Rea, who is hard at work torturing a blonde throughout most of the movie. Exactly WHAT they have to do with each other, however, is anybody’s guess as the script is just too confusing for words. Although it appears a rather pathetic ghost is involved.
Poorly Scripted Trash
The acting is uniformly atrocious to the point of hilarity – one scene
involves McElhone madly screaming “TELL ME WHERE HE IS!” at a hospital
receptionist for no reason and then abjectly apologising when she’s told off.
However, apart from the dodgy acting, the only amusement comes in seeing all the ways they’ve disguised the height difference between the two leads.
Basically, feardotcom is over-directed, confused, badly-acted, poorly scripted trash. And not in a good way. If it’s a dose of horror you’re after, see the excellent Wrong Turn instead.