Feardotcom

Plot synopsis:
Mike Black Reilly (Stephen Dorff) is an NYPD detective who is called to the scene of a mysterious death in the subway system. The victim, Polidori (Udo Kier), exhibits bleeding from his eyes and other orifices and, by the frozen look on his face, appears to have seen something horrifying before being hit by a train.
Department of Health researcher Terry Huston (Natascha McElhone) is intrigued by the find as well, particularly when several more victims show up with identical symptoms.
When a contagious virus is ruled out, Terry and Mike team up to discover what might be killing these people. Initially they are unable to find anything to connect the deaths together; after some more digging for clues, they eventually discover that all of the victims' computers crashed shortly before their passings. They send each of the victims' hard drives to Mike's friend, Denise Stone (Amelia Curtis), who is a forensic specialist.
Denise discovers that all of the victims had visited a website called Feardotcom, which depicts voyeuristic torture murder. Upon looking at the site herself, Denise is subjected to various sights and sounds of torture that eventually drive her crazy and result in her falling to her death from her apartment window.
Mike feels guilty, thinking that he should have never gotten Denise involved in the case. Terry figures out that people who visit the website die within 48 hours, apparently from what they feared most in their lives. Despite such dangerous knowledge, both she and Mike visit the site in order to figure out what is happening.
As they begin to experience paranoia and hallucinations (like the deceased), including that of a young girl and her inflatable ball, they race against time to figure out if any of it has any connection to an extremely vicious serial killer, Alistair "The Doctor" Pratt (Stephen Rea), who's been eluding Mike for years.
It is revealed that Feardotcom is, in fact, a ghost site made by one of Pratt's first victims, who is seeking revenge because people watched her being tortured and murdered. She was tortured by Pratt for 48 hours before she begged him to kill her, which explains why the victims have 48 hours to live. Mike and Terry track down Pratt and release the spirit of the murdered girl from the website, which kills Pratt. However, Mike is also killed.
The ending scene shows Terry lying in her bed with her cat. The phone rings but she hears no one on the line, only online static. She hangs up and hugs the cat.

Tags: revenge, neo noir, murder, violence

Review:
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.
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..
About halfway through the movie, I was actually considering giving this a 4, but the complete and utter lack of reasoning in this movie that made me give it a 1 I will now try to sum up.The ghost made a website that people can log (and start hallucinating from) onto only 48 hours later they will be dead unless they find her body so she can exact revenge on someone who killed her on another website that people subscribe to, even though she kills other people in car crashes and train accidents who had no involvement with her death.Things I learned from FearDotCom:-Ghosts are capable of creating websites.-The internet is inherently evil.-People who use the internet are freaks.-People who use the internet are incapable of closing their eyes.-A bunch of weird images on a computer can drive someone crazy and make them hallucinate.-A bunch of weird images on a movie can drive someone so crazy that they hallucinate so they think what they are watching makes one ounce of logical sense.Obviously the producers of this movie wanted the audience to be driven insane by the film and have shut off our brains by the time the "ending" has arrived.
I watched it quite some time ago, expecting it to be decent enough, entertaining at least, because I really liked the tagline and the premise seemed fun, though I have learned to stay away from a lot of "technology killing" horrors over the past few years now, and I remembered before I watched it again recently that I hated it the first time I watched it, a lot, and it was very negatively reviewed as well.
Watching it again confirmed my feelings.The film itself is just entirely ridiculous and absurd from beginning to end with a horrible storyline and lame performances and "thrills".
I especially hated the ludicrous characters and twists, and also the way the story was executed in a poor manner, not being able to stay with one main idea for too long that it is infuriatingly annoying to watch the plot, what plot there is at least, unfold.
The movie resembles a little diddy of a film titled "Ringu/The Ring" an awful lot, though both of those renditions are spectacular and this pales entirely in comparison, and even though there are some nice settings in this movie, that is really and truly the only plus side to it.There are many noticeable errors and plot holes, the dialogue is, for our inconvenience, not as laughable as one would hope, but corny enough to get a few giggles now and then, especially some of the deliverances from the female lead, and the climax/ending is not anywhere near heartracing or interest sparking, just bland and hardly tolerable.
But, when the plot of a film is neither logical nor entertaining you get one movie: FeardotCom. I'd rather watch Anti-Smoking Commercials.
The whole movie is very dark in scenery and in acting.The movie is about a website (feardotcom.com) that if you go there some dead chick asks you if you want to play a game, and then eventually kills you.
Behind the website is a snuff film maker that shows footage of him killing people 'erotically.' The director of this movie must has some screws loose in his head.
This could have been a decent horror film, but all things considered, this movie ranks a 1 on the rating scale and a 10 on the pain scale.My suggestion is to watch a horror film such as 'The Ring' or John Carpenter's 'The Thing.' Both are edge-of-your-seat thrillers that will show you what horror is meant to be...
Certainly not the movie I watched) and that people paid money to see it because I just assumed, based on the quality of the film as well as where I watched it, that it was one of those low budget, poorly acted, nonsensically over the top, made for TV SyFy original movies.
Lastly, the movie is about a website (feardotcom.com) that when visited, causes death in exactly 48 hours.
Stephen Dorff is one of those actors who needs to fire his agent, he is talented and easy on the eye, and has made some good films like Blood and Wine, and World Trade Centre.
After this and In Dreams (a big mistake for Neil Jordan!) he is gonna need about 10 movies as good as Interview With The Vampire, The Crying Game and The End Of The Affair for him to sink his acting chops into again, before he can wash the taste of this experience out of his mouth!
blah blah blah, it didn't work Billy, your film makes everyone look like they need a good wash and a shot of tequila ...
Too many of the "scares" were laughable, too many of the scenes pointless.The only saving grace for my $5.50 was the trailer for "Ghost Ship" before the movie.The lead actress, Natascha McElhone,looks like a cross between Crystal Gayle and Meryl Streep, with the acting ablitiy of Tawny Kitaen.
Actually, it deserves a half point for showing boobs and another half point because Natascha McElhone gets hotter as the movie goes on (BUT THIS IS NOT NEARLY A GOOD ENOUGH REASON TO WASTE ANY TIME ON SEEING THIS MOVIE!!!).
The plot had potential but it's poorly executed and makes "The Ring" look like a masterpiece.The f/x are CGI mediocrity and there isn't any remarkable production value.My advice is : forget about this movie.
OK, one should not expect too much logic from a horror movie, but the rest is poor quality as well - bad acting, a lot of cheap violence, and very little real thrill.
Avoid this film, unless you are one of these guys who never lose any horror movie.
i loved the movie because it had a good creepy feeling thats awesome in a scary movie and also the secret between the little girl and her mother and the scientist and that the little girl had a problem i diden see that coming she was a hemophiliac or something like that i haven't seen the movie in a long time i was 14 or 15 when i seen it yea the movie had tons of cool things to it that I'm not all going to whrite down but i am going to say that I'm going to get that movie for my movie collection fear.com was a rental so i wasn't able to keep it but years later while i was online it hit me fear.com lol kinda weard huh well I'm saying goodbye and to the ones in or made fear.com.
brilliant, twisted artist) A FASCINATING book of GREAT horror films that never got made, because Studio Execs are Complete Idiots, who think Giger is too shocking for us, and we're too stupid to know the difference between good films and bad!!
He told some of us at the screening, that after HOHH it was the only script (fear dot com) he'd gotten, where the producers weren't suggesting having the writers of `Friends' do rewrites,  or wasn't a remake of Frankenstein filled retard CGI like "The Mummy" remakeSo anyway on to the film...
This film is all about piercing your psyche and i think that it really is a good movie (for about the first 45 minutes)then it just completely changes track and spins out of control to a very anti climactic ending, a waste of Good actors both Stephen Dorff and Natascha McElhone are actors who deserves much better, feardotcom was a good movie if you only watch it once or just watch for 45 minutes as i've said before, it just spins out of control and you don't make sense out of anything.
the only reason that i gave it a two is that Stephen Sorff and Natascha McElhone, have great screen chemistry, don't watch this one unless you haven't seen the ring or the grudge which both rock in comparison to this one , a waste of time is the only thing i can think of.
When I think back to when I saw the Ring and compare it to my reaction to the other William Malone (director of Feardotcom) films that I saw that year, House on Haunted Hill, I came to realize that had I seen Feardotcom that year, it would have scared the pants off me.
Not 3, which you would clearly see if you actually took the time to watch the film instead of turning it off at the first Ring similarity that you see..
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.
Well, they all died 48 hours after logging into the site FEARDOTCOM.COM....yes, it's feardotcom.COMSounds like the ring eh, well it is and it isn't, because with the Ring, you get more into the reasoning behind the video tape, in this movie you have some guy filming himself killing people, then people die from their worst fear after going to feardotcom....sorry feardotcom.com.
This film falls into the category of "RIPOFF".After seeing the opening scene I know that this movie would be average at best....I was wrong, it was below average.
Even the great Combs was underused and abused."I think your perfect for the lead role, come with me" "well, I don't know you, and you look kinda freaky, but what the hell, I'll go with you and tell no one, and surely sign my death warrant" Well, maybe that last bit wasn't in the movie but it might as well should have been.PLEASE!!!
Now I know you all have your right to your own oppinion, but someone tell me straight out why you didn't like this movie instead of just saying how bad it was..
I know they wanted it dark since it was a dark subject but it would have been nice to actually SEE the movie ;-) I really enjoyed the storyline and all the acting, though.
This movie was great and anyone who doesn't think so, has no taste in horror films.
A police officer (Stephen Doriff) and a health department inspector (Natascha McElhone) team up together to find out what is going on while a crazed killer (Stephen Rea) who kidnaps and tortures young women is on the loose and is somehow connected to the site.Under rated horror film is one of those films that doesn't make you jump out of your seat, but instead slowly works on adding layer upon layer of tension.
This is not a summary or review.This movie, Fear Dot Com, was not great and I will admit that, but it was not bad, and does not deserve to be on the IMDb bottom 100.
So I gave it a 10, and hope you do too, to get it off the IMDb bottom 100 list.Guys come on, We have all seen tons of movies much worse than Fear Dot Com.It had good music "Sonne" by Rammstein..The plot was interesting, it just wasn't filmed the best, and it was kind of confusing..
I actually found this movie to be not that bad...not saying that it was the greatest horror movie ever, but I believe it was worth watching.
While the story line was similar to The Ring (which I suppose is a "remake" of Ringu), I still think it was original enough to not call it a copy-cat (even though the release date for The Ring was after FearDotCom, I have no idea which was actually in development first).Either way, it has a fairly descent "creepy" factor, and enough little shocks & gore to certainly make it better than one of the bottom 100 movies rated on IMDb (as of June 2004)..
FearDotCom is by far the most stylish horror film to come around in a long long time; unfortunately, that's about where the good points end.
Likewise, the events in the film also never seem to click together very well; everything has a vague and illogical connection to each other, but before long you stop worrying about trying to follow it and just enjoy the visuals or turn it off to find a movie that makes sense and you can follow (and if that's what you're looking for, why the hell did you visit a horror film in the first place?).
Feardotcom isn't the greatest horror film I've seen, but I'd recommend it over some so-called `cult classics.'.
"Fear dot com" is a really good horror film.
At times I think the movie is too short to really get into the plot, but then I realize it's up to the viewer to get it and get sucked into it.
FearDotCom uses elements from Ringu (Better known as The Ring), the strong Japanese horror film.DVD has an terrific anamorphic Widescreen (2.35:1) transfer and an strong-Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound.
The visuals of this film is so creative that the movie is so bad that is actually worth seeing.
yet, my heart is pumping and blood is rushing to my nose while watching this film.the only persons that i would not recommend this movie to are people with cardiovascular or neurological disorders.
This movie is no worse than 'The Ring', (a thriller with a very similar plot line) which was also released last summer, each of which has the same premise: Once the object is observed (videocasette/website), the watcher has a specific time frame in which they die (2 weeks/2 days) due to a malevolent spirit of a murdered female extracting her vengance on the voyeurs brave enough to watch.Granted, Naomi Watts is a much better actress than Natascha McElhone, but the rest of the cast of each film are on equal ground.
This film is indeed graphic, actually showing the scenes of horror and torture, while 'Ring' typically implies these until the climatic ending.Herein may lie the answer.
And very, very good.True, it's ruthlessly unpleasant to watch (in this regard, the comparisons to Se7en are very accurate) but the visuals are brilliant and the film succeeds in creating a true atmosphere of suspense that relies on genuine terror rather than cheap sound effects for its scares.
The bad acting doesn't really get out of control though, so the movie maintains cohesion.All in all, a really good ghost story that is really closer to _What Lies Beneath_ than _House on Haunted Hill_.
The only reason I watched "Feardotcom" is that it's currently #53 on IMDB's infamous Bottom 100 List...the 100 worst rated majoy release films.
For a film as bad as Alone In The Dark (AITD movie has a 1% on Rotten Tomatoes), it probably comes nowhere as near or even close.
He was humorous at times, twisted at others, but always made you feel like he was a sick puppy that needed to get his.All in all, I give this movie a 9 out of 10.
FearDotLu. When reading the plot summary of Fear.com it seems that this is just another one of those flawed murders-through-internet-thriller-movies but fortunately, this one gets it right.Not that the story is that fantastic, but the movie keeps one interested until the end to find out what this murders are all about.Cinematography and lighting are well above Hollywood average, the movie sometimes really surprises one with its greats shots and well done effects.
I don't know why most of the people, do not like the film fear dot com!It wasn't the best but still good and solid work.
Ok, I had a lot of dejavues to Ringu but that is all right for me.This film has everything I expect from such a kind of movie.
I Thought the plot of this movie was really good because the internet is a big fear among "todays society"...
Honestly, I feel if the film were a short movie, my rating would be higher.
Granted, the film is no masterpiece, but it's actually a pretty good movie.Detective Mike Reilly (Stephen Dorff) is tracking down a sadistic killer who calls himself "The Doctor." But more importantly, is a series of mysterious and gruesome deaths which may or may not be a disease.
This is an effectively made film, although the editing is bad, and the story is stolen from better movies ("The Ring" in particular).
I own this movie and I've watched it at least 7 or 8 times, and it never gets old!
i think all these people who posted these comments should go watch the movie again...
Alas, the film isn't too frighteningly plotted.**** FeardotCom (8/9/02) William Malone ~ Stephen Dorff, Natascha McElhone, Stephen Rea. A good horror film: creepy and frightening.
At time of writing Feardotcom is down as the 53rd worst rated movie on IMDB and I truly don't understand why.
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?
Hardly.The Good:Natascha McElhone and Jeffrey CombsThe Bad:Stephen Rea and Jeffrey Combs feel wastedPlot falls apartTakes a lot from other films.
When action starts to take place movie is becoming just another "survival horror" and the end of production finishes it.This film isn't anything special.