.com for Murder

Roger Daltrey of The Who, has to leave town. So he lets his snoop untrusting wheelchair-bound wife alone with her sister. Of course the wife acts like a pre-teen girl & starts a fight with a psycho hacker who wants to kill them. It's up to Huey Lewis of Huey Lewis fame to save her before it's too late. When one watches a Nico Mastorakis film one doesn't expect a logical story or likable characters or any semblance of a good movie. Those that watch Mastorakis's films are pretty much sexists who like to test their endurance of crap. This film is no different in that respect.

My Grade: D-

Where i saw it: Showtime on demand

To date, Nico Mastorakis's last non-documentary feature and a return to the horror genre, this time focusing on the perils of the internet. Its positioning in time is an odd one, making it partly forward-thinking in terms of certain dangers widely available internet might pose, while in terms of specific technologies (or just a lack of knowledge in the writers) make it a curio of that early era of message boards and "You've Got Mail." There was a bit of a cheap, low-rent visual style that I didn't exactly care for. And while things never quite got boiling the way they did in the Hitchcock films Mastorakis was clearly paying homage to, it was still interesting. I liked this better than the farces that came before it, even if it never really reached the heights of absurdity that characterized what I liked about his earliest work.

This psychological thriller is something like "Rear Window of the cyber age". Nastassja Kinski is the beautiful Sondra Brummel who got stuck in a wheel chair due to some ski accident while her boyfriend Ben (rock singer Roger Daltrey) goes out of town. Misty Brummel (Nicolette Sheridan of "Knots Landing") comes over to help Sondra recover, and the two sisters spend some time together on the web, using Ben's password to sneak in some private chatroom. The Internet chitchats seem to be enjoyable until Sondra and Misty accidentally watch some suspicious guy threaten to rape and kill a girl (Kim Valentine). Not only they fail to convince an FBI agent (pop star Huey Lewis) into thwarting a virtual crime, they even put themselves in serious danger, because the psychotic killer (Jeffrey Dean) happens to be a vicious hacker who wastes no time tracking them down to their own residence...

Obviously scriptwriter and director Nico Mastorakis has done everything to make this movie an entertaining high-tech thriller. The website stripping scenes with porn star Julie Strain and "body double" Shelley Michelle are just appetizers to a lot of exciting and mysterious features that we can expect from (and should be watchful about) the Internet, and the digital visual effects and sounds do help make them more believable. As always, Nastassja Kinski gives a solid performance, while Nicolette Sheridan and the rest of the cast do their best as well (even Melinda Clarke is pretty cool in her minor role as FBI agent Williams). Although the DVD doesn't have any special features or commentaries, etc..., its widescreen and Dolby sound suffice to make ".com for Murder" a not-so-perfect but worth seeing movie. If you think such high-tech thrillers as "Hackers" or "StrangeLand" are good, you may like this one because it's somehow better.

and boy did this movie test my resolve. This is a damn awful movie that is neither scary, creepy, or suspenseful. The dialogue is terrible and the acting is even worse. No one in this movie ever has the appropiate reaction to any situation. And the villian is just so bad he's not scary, he's laughable. You know you are in trouble when the best acting performance in your movie is by Huey Lewis. And is it just me or is it odd hearing Huey Lewis say the F* word. I guess it's not hip to be square anymore.

- halderic

(i imported this from the newsboard, since i think anyone ever looks over there)

I really enjoyed watching this movie but for absolutely every wrong reason imaginable. The movie stunk. The acting was cringe-worthy and the whole thing had a very low budget feel to it. If this movie had been advertised as a black comedy and the actors had hammed it up it may have fared better. The serial killer was by far the most enjoyable character to watch. His non-sensical poetry (Lotte, Lotte, Lotte, what the f*&#??) and ridiculous eye make-up were genuinely funny and the actor who portrays him is about as talented as a coma patient. After seeing this movie I couldn't instantly think of any movies in recent years that were this bad and that is a testament to just how awful this is. The director seems to have had quite a successful career, albeit low-key. I cannot understand how this ever got made and it baffles me when money is involved that something so obviously bad can actually be financed.

Having said all these nasty things there is a perverted pleasure in repeating atrocious lines and heckling the screen with a bunch of friends as you would a bad stand up comic.

A truly awful movie but as a one off viewing, a guilty pleasure nonetheless :-)