Miedo.punto.com

At time of writing Feardotcom is down as the 53rd worst rated movie on IMDB and I truly don't understand why. Let's make something perfectly clear, this is a bad movie but it's in no way bad to that degree.

Starring Stephen "Blade" Dorff, Natascha "Truman Show" McElhone, industry veteran Stephen Rea, one of my all time favorite actors Jeffrey Combs and the token cameo appearance by Udo Kier it certainly does have a decent roster.

It tells the story of a website which when visited gives you 48hrs before you go insane and die. Basically it's Ringu/The Ring (1998) just with tweaks. Sadly those tweaks aren't very good and the movie has come out as a bit of a confused mess.

I get what they were trying to do and disagree with other reviewers that the film didn't make sense, it really did. It just wasn't very good and it felt like such a great cast were thoroughly wasted on this, especially considering it's a blatant ripoff of The Ring which had its US remake the very same year this came out.

Bad film? Absolutely. One of the worst? Hardly.

The Good:

Natascha McElhone and Jeffrey Combs

The Bad:

Stephen Rea and Jeffrey Combs feel wasted

Plot falls apart

Takes a lot from other films

I would estimate that I've seen over a thousand movies in my lifetime. FeardotCom may very well be the worst of those films. The acting is bad, the dialogue is worse, and the editing is terrible. The film lacks coherence, cohesiveness, and, in some parts, comprehensiveness. The film manages to maintain its unwatchability for over an hour, but by that point the viewer will probably have already logged onto www.feardotcom.com in hopes of ending the misery. If I had been able to give this movie less than a star, I would have done so in a heartbeat. Do not make the mistake of renting this movie; there's a small chance it may scare you, but the odds of that happening are not worth sitting through 90 minutes of some of the worst examples of film-making.

I've seen my fair share of bad movies. But I can honestly say that this is in my top 3 worst movies. Usually, when I see an extremely bad film, it's so awful that it's funny - which makes it somewhat entertaining. But this film went into another and far worse category. A film so awful that I got a headache - not because the plot was so complex and intelligent, but because the plot was so ridiculous and unrealistic.

It's simple: when you go in search of a killer, call for backup. Don't go alone into an empty building. Have some common sense! Unfortunatelt, all the characters in FeardotCom, seem to have been born without the common sense gene.

I could suffer through dozens of cheesy horror flicks where the victim getting chased by a killer conveniently trips and falls down while the killer get increasingly closer. . . I could even suffer through poor acting in a horror flick if the plot is entertaining and at least scary.

But, when the plot of a film is neither logical nor entertaining you get one movie: FeardotCom

I was interested to see if time had been kind to this film, or if the original loathing I felt during the release still held. Well the answer, it's worse then I remember, time has of course been unkind, so it now looks dated, but worse, it's an incoherent mess, that makes absolutely no sense. I will give some credit to Natasha McElhone, who does at least try and give a sincere performance, but she was up against it in this dire film.

At the time the production values were pretty good, so I won't slate it for ageing, but I will slam it for being a terrible film, that makes no sense at all, it never decides whether it wants to be a thriller or a supernatural horror.

Avoid. 2/10

If the survival of horror films depends on titles such as this "FearDotCom", we are indeed facing the downfall of the genre. This is lame, uninspired and repetitive garbage that irritates you from start to finish. Director William Malone's idea of suspense exists out of underexposed and fuzzy images of murders edited together in boisterous flashes that actually show you NOTHING. Add a poorly written script about a murderous website and completely unconvincing characters to this and you've got yourself one of the biggest cinema-turkeys since the new millennium. If the premise of this film rings a bell, it means that you recognize it from the Japanese cult hit "Ringu"…. Or the slightly inferior American remake "the Ring". Only, the videotape has been replaced by an internet website and the poor victims have only 2 days left to live after being exposed instead of 7. Typical for an unscrupulous rip-off…Faster, louder and modernized! The elaboration is a mess: weak dialogue, plot holes all over the place, no style or atmosphere and very bad acting. I can't believe class actors like Udo Kier and Stephen Rea were talked into accepting roles like this? Surely they can still do better even though they both have seen their best times. Stephen Dorff and the leading lady deliver lousy performances in roles that really don't fit them. Dorff as a tough, experienced copper? Doubtful… Perhaps what annoyed me most about the cast (shallow, I admit) is seeing how one of my all-time favorite B-actors, Jeffrey Combs, is given such a small and insignificant role! That's Doctor Herbert West from Re-Animator we're talking about, dammit! Show a little more respect, Malone! If you love horror, you should avoid "FearDotCom" at all costs! It's bad for your nerve system.