Perhaps the reader can find some redeeming value in what is essentially a sleazy freak show; I cannot.
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In yet another of those monumental Hollywood coincidences, we got a pair of horror films in 2002 with similar themes, "The Ring," about a haunted videotape that kills people, and "FearDotCom," about a haunted Web site that kills people. It's there, however, that the similarities end. "The Ring" is well crafted and genuinely spooky. "FearDotCom" is clumsy and grotesque.
Even the movie's title is in question. The DVD cover jacket calls it "fEaR doT Com," with spaces between the words and a combination of upper and lowercase letters. The back of the jacket refers to it as "feardotcom," entirely lowercase and with no spaces. Then, to confuse the issue further the back cover directs the viewer to an actual Web site called "feardotcom.com." The movie's opening credits, however, call it "FearDotCom," no spaces but capital letters for the main words, so that's how I'll refer to it in the remainder of the review. That settled, there isn't a lot more about the movie I can explain so easily.
The story begins with an agreeably moody opening sequence in a dark subway station, with rain coming down outside and a creepy little girl and her ball inside, the girl leading a man to his death on the railway tracks. The victim is found not hit by a train but bleeding from the eyes and nose, dead of unknown causes. Clutched in his hands when the police pry it loose is a document titled "The Secret Soul of the Internet."
Spooky, no? Unfortunately, that's the extent of the film's spookiness, because from that point on it's all downhill, the film quickly degenerating into an interminable gallery of ever more hideous sights.
The stars are Stephen Dorff as Police Detective Mike Reilly, who is in charge of the case, and Natascha McElhone as Department of Health official Terry Houston, who is assisting Mike with the investigation. She is called in to determine if some dread disease killed the fellow, but when bodies start turning up all over the city, all of them bleeding from the nose and eyes, they figure they have a plague on their hands. Not so, however. No sign of infection is found in any of the bodies. No, they all appear to have died of fright. What's more, a tape made by two of the latest victims reveals they watched something on their computer just before they died.
Of course, a Web site called "Fear.com" is responsible for all these people going mad, bleeding, and dying of their own worst nightmares. But what is the Web site all about? It turns out to be a related subplot about a mad fellow called "The Doctor" (Stephen Rea), who broadcasts live Web cam pictures of young women he captures and tortures to death, a kind of snuff site with grisly preliminaries. So, from plain silliness the film deteriorates further into crude, perverse obscenity as ghastly images of torment and mutilation flash by in lurid procession.
Basically, the movie tries to appeal to the very same elements in human nature that the Fear.com Web site appeals to--the lowest, grossest instincts of human curiosity. The movie attempts to do what the Web site does, make the viewer watch a guilty pleasure. But it's not a pleasure to watch. The movie's values are too corrupt and its premise too ridiculous to watch; worse, the story is muddled and wacky, with so much murky, obscure, surreal camera work and quick-cut, flash editing, you can hardly tell what's happening much of the time.
I mentioned the moodiness of the dark subway a moment ago. That may be all fine and good for one sequence, but, in fact, the lights never seem to go on in this movie. I mean, they go on, but they don't seem to do any light anything up. Every scene is dimly lit, every shot filmed in murky darkness. Even in hospitals and police stations, which should be well lit up, we're faced with darkness. In a movie like "Dark City" the gimmick worked perfectly well; here, it just becomes irksome. The movie also becomes tiresome in another, more standard horror-film way; namely, every female presence in the movie is a beautiful young woman, from the DOH lady to the city coroner to a computer analyst brought in to examine the videotape.
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[release]10686[/release]