Themes: Mental Breakdown, Mind Games, Woman In Jeopardy
Main Cast: Stephen Dorff, Natascha McElhone, Stephen Rea, Udo Kier, Amelia Curtis
Release Year: 2002
Country: US
Run Time: 101 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Terror is lurking online in this thriller directed by William Malone, who also helmed the 1999 remake of House on Haunted Hill. Mike Reilly (Stephen Dorff) is a NYPD detective who has been assigned to look into a string of murders which have taken place in Manhattan, with Terry Houston (Natascha McElhone), a researcher from the city Department of Health, lending her assistance whether Reilly likes it or not. Reilly discovers that all four victims have one thing in common -- they were all men who logged on to the same Internet website exactly 48 hours before they were killed. It seems the website features a sexy woman offering kinky fun to those who enter her domain, but clicking the wrong icon takes users on a journey into fear. Reilly decides the only way to find out the truth is to head into the website and find out what follows for the next two days -- if he can make it out alive. Fear dot com also stars Stephen Rea, Jeffrey Combs, and Udo Kier. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
Fear Dot Com is the kind of movie in which the characters all share the same brand of web browser, and it uses this unlikely gothic-horror typeface whether they're logging into the deadly website of the title or, in theory, their grandmother's homepage. Fear Dot Com is the kind of movie in which a health department worker (Natascha McElhone) swims down into the depths of a swamp poisoned by chemicals, underneath a decrepit factory, because she suspects there might be "something" there -- and lo and behold, she discovers a body. Fear Dot Com is the kind of movie that laughably botches a potentially chilling concept, but at least it's not an original one -- the movie may have beaten the The Ring to theaters by several months, but it certainly rips off Hideo Nakata's original Japanese version, Ringu, with a killer website substituting for a killer videotape. William Malone's film is a turkey alright, but not because it fails to generate flashes of disturbing imagery that might haunt a person under the right circumstances. What's seen here is, in ways, more fulfilling than the watered down Luis Buñuel footage from The Ring. Rather, Fear Dot Com is undone by a cavalcade of logistical failures and moronic plot contrivances like the ones enumerated above, which totally validate the need for a good continuity editor. Presiding over the whole enterprise is a conductor of operatic psychosis played by Stephen Rea, who prates on with platitudes about "liking to watch" and "the power of the Internet" in an accent that sounds like a madhouse John F. Kennedy. Fear Dot Com might actually kill you within 48 hours -- death by incredulousness, indifference, or sheer disgust. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide
