Terreur point 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

Investigating a spate of similar deaths that may be virus related, officer Mike Reilly and Department of Health's Terry Huston are left stumped by the connections in the similar deaths. However as the deaths continue, some video taped clues surface and guide them. They uncover a website that may be related to the deaths and also reminds Reilly of the cruel doctor Alistair Pratt. What CAN it all mean?

In an attempt to be fair to this film, I was in the gym when I watched this film and was jogging for the majority of the time. Maybe that means I wasn't concentrating and thus missed the good side of it, or I was too focused on it (to avoid the pain) and became nick-picky. Either way I'm sure my opinion of this film would be the same in either situation. – that this film is polished nonsense.

The plot is so lacking a central focus point, a driver if you will, that at times it is as disjointed as some of the butchered bodies on display. Those strands that do exist are very loose and don't really hang convincingly well together. The end result is that there is no real tension to speak of – certainly no fear. While I did think that the main idea of the website was good, it went nowhere of merit.

What was left was simply a lot of flashy MTV camera shots and cinematography to try and give the impression of weirdness or an impressive film. If the substance had been there in support these might have been more impressive, as it is they only serve to highlight how utterly hollow they are.

The cast are all pretty average. I only watched it because I saw Dorff's name in the credits but he did nothing to really speak of. Likewise McElhone easily slips into scream queen mode. Rea's evil doctor was OK but not expanded on at all or used well at any point. The support cast of victims all run round scared (or bleeding) as required – no more no less.

Overall I was disappointed wit the film. It had an interesting, if not great concept to work from, but failed to build any sort of substance and comes off just looking like a long music video with gore.

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 hate horror movies that evolve into a waste of time. The plot becomes too unbelievabe, and gets across as stupid. This film starts out all right, and is a cross between 8mm and Videodrome. The idea of a virus invading the mind threw the optic nerve, and attacking the eletormagnetic impulses in the mind is scary, and I hope will never become a reality. Instead of following up on this scary idea, the movie become too unbelievable. It contains idiotic scenes where the viewer says to himself you got to be kidding! I wish I saved the $15 for my wife and myself, but it has been a awful summer for movies. 3/10

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