Taglines: Want to see a really killer website? It’s the last site you’ll ever see.
FeardotCom movie storyline. Terror is lurking online in this thriller directed by William Malone, who also helmed the 1999 remake of House on Haunted Hill. Mike Reilly (Stephen Dorff) is a NYPD detective who has been assigned to look into a string of murders which have taken place in Manhattan, with Terry Houston (Natascha McElhone), a researcher from the city Department of Health, lending her assistance whether Reilly likes it or not.
Reilly discovers that all four victims have one thing in common — they were all men who logged on to the same Internet website exactly 48 hours before they were killed. It seems the website features a sexy woman offering kinky fun to those who enter her domain, but clicking the wrong icon takes users on a journey into fear. Reilly decides the only way to find out the truth is to head into the website and find out what follows for the next two days — if he can make it out alive. Fear dot com also stars Stephen Rea, Jeffrey Combs, and Udo Kier.
FeardotCom is a 2002 horror film directed by William Malone and starring Stephen Dorff, Natascha McElhone and Stephen Rea. The plot details a New York City detective investigating a series of mysterious deaths connected to a disturbing website. Shot on location in Luxembourg and Montreal, the film was released in mid-2002 and grossed $18.9 million against its $40 million budget.
Film Review for FeardotCom
The one thing truly frightening about the slasher flick “feardotcom” is that Stephen Rea wastes his considerable talents in a supporting role as a man who likes an audience while he tortures young women. Stephen, call your agent. The story extrapolates from the phenomenon of bleary-eyed Web surfers who spend too much time at porn sites. In “feardotcom,” these computer nerds die 48 hours after logging onto a Web site that is interactively voyeuristic and very likely deadly. “Do you like to watch?
“purrs the Webmistress who materializes on the screen. Click “on” and she’ll hound you like a telemarketer to change your mind. Once signed up, the subscriber gets an eyeful of horrific images of kidnap, torture and mutilation, many involving Rea waxing poetic about death while preparing his next victim. The concept is not far from reality. Watching the Daniel Pearl video that made the rounds of the Internet was similarly sickening. Those who visit this “feardotcom” site find that their eyes are bleeding, which makes the police and the health services first suspect the deadly Ebola virus. But it’s no virus, more like an Information Age payback. The movie could have been called “I Know What You Did Online.
“With an underlit Luxembourg standing in rather ineffectually for New York City, the movie’s palette is so dark it’s possible every scene was enacted on one set. Who can tell, what with all that monotonous, blue-filtered shadow? Investigators enter crime scenes without bothering to turn on a light. Perhaps the action is supposed to take place during a rolling blackout. Stephen Dorff plays a cop, hardly New York’s finest, and Natascha McElhone plays an unlikely Health Dept. inspector who grins vapidly while discussing serious public health threats.
They are both dim bulbs, perhaps to match the movie’s lighting. What, they wonder, could the victims possibly have in common? (Here’s a clue: Each has a computer that imploded.) The victims also experience disturbing visions of a little girl playing with a ball. They die either of fright or of astonishment that director William Malone would steal so blatantly from Stanley Kubrick. Malone has an eye for moody tableaux and certainly knows his horror classics – he rips off several of them, from “Peeping Tom” to the Danish TV series “Kingdom.
“Many of his artful compositions look like those tattered black-and-white B movies they used to show on afternoon TV. Meanwhile, the story is a mess, some of the images offensive, the acting under par and the dialogue silly. One audience member at the screening yelled over the end credits: “I want two hours of my life back!
FeardotCom (2002)
Directed by: William Malone
Starring: Stephen Dorff, Natascha McElhone, Stephen Rea, Udo Kier, Amelia Curtis, Jeffrey Combs, Gesine Cukrowski, Michael Sarrazin, Jana Güttgemanns, Anna Thalbach
Screenplay by: Josephine Coyle
Production Design by: Jérôme Latour
Cinematography by: Christian Sebaldt
Film Editing by: Alan Strachan
Set Decoration by: Mona Kino, Michaela Quast
Art Direction by: Regine Freise
Makeup Department: Zoltan Elek
Music by: Nicholas Pike
MPAA Rating: R for violence including grisly images of torture, nudity and language.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: August 30, 2002
Views: 378
