FearDotCom

I’m going to have to ask you to leave

2002

Review: June 27, 2006

Director: William Malone

Starring: Stephen Dorff, Natascha McElhone, Stephen Rea, Udo Kier

Probably the best way to make it through.

THE SETUP:

Same deal with The Ring but this time with a website.

DISCUSSION:

Remember when the Internet had only been around for a little while and it was considered a somewhat viable topic that there might be something, you know, EVIL about it? That’s the place where this movie hails from. All that anonymity, “connecting” with people who may not be who they say, etc. Golly, I’m getting chills just thinking about it.

A friend of mine watched this one day while home sick, and told me that he kind of became obsessed with it and watched it like four times in a row. Of course, this guy is a sort of filmic masochist, getting off on things that are truly hideous, so I was not moved to see it myself. Then one day I found the DVD cheap, and bought it for him, but thought I’d watch it myself first. If it tells you anything, I watched a bit of it at first, then a little more a few weeks later, and ultimately it took me about two months to get through the whole thing.

The first thing is that this guy is all creeped out and he goes down the subway and gets hit by a train. We are introduced to Stephen Dorff as Mike, a detective, who soon teams with Natascha McAlhone as Terry, the viral biologist or something. I like both of these actors. Dorff was amazing as Candy Darling in I Shot Andy Warhol, and I really liked him in Blade. I even saw Deuces Wild [but that was with my friend who has a fetish for 50s Italian low-lifes in white T-shirts], and he’s always been very good. It’s too bad his career has gotten so derailed. I have always thought that Natascha was pretty, and was REALLY impressed with her performance in the Stephen Soderburgh Solaris. Unfortunately fate has not been kind to either of them, and it’s a little embarassing to see them in something like this. And then Dorff did Alone in the Dark.

Anyway, in a New York that in NO way resembles Canada, there are people dying in weird ways. Terry and Mike soon connect the murders to FearDotCom, which is actually written into a browser as FearDomCom.com, which is STOOOOOPID. They tell their Internet expert friend to look into it, and soon she’s all spooked and finally dies a horrible death assaulted by CGI bugs. Then they figure out that people who log onto the site die [via their worst fear] two days to the second after logging onto the site.

Oh, did I ever mention that anyone who logs onto THIS site dies within seven days? Yeah. Thought I’d mention that. Time to call Grandma.

My best guess is that someone saw the Japanese version of The Ring [or read the novel], and thought they’d steal the concept and tie it into this creepy, creepy phenomenon known as the Internet. That theory is subject to research, but I’m gonna stand by it for now. **Okay, reasearch done. The novel Ringu came out in 1998. This movie came out in 2002. The American version of The Ring also came out in 2002. Draw from that what inferences you may.

Anyway, Terry makes Mike promise not to visit the Fear site, as it is called. He of course goes straight home and logs on, then starts having a lot of music video-type hallucinations. It would seem that there’s a serial killer out there [isn’t there always?] who tangled with Mike in the past, and one of the people he killed was this promising model. So Mike freaks out, and as he’s being piled into the ambulance, he makes Terry swear that she won’t visit the Fear site. Like Mike, she goes straight home and logs on. You know, having your characters be fucking dumb does not help engender sympathy toward your fucking dumb movie. There is a good shot in there, quickly, where Terry is seen pushing against her computer monitor, trying to get the images out of her face! Poor Natascha is SO above all this shit, it embarrassed ME.

So it would seem that the GHOST of the model has entered the Internet [huh?] because the whole thing is some kind of giant neural net or some shit. So there’s a ghost AND a serial killer. Ain’t it always the way?

So Terry swims through this gross industrial water and finds the corpse of the model, but anyone who has seen any Japanese horror movie knows full well that this isn’t enough to stop the horror [only your DVD player’s ‘eject’ button can do that]. She then apparently just leaves the body there, because we never see any police or anything.

Then follows my favorite scene. Terry goes up to this receptionist at the hospital and says “Mike Reilly, where is he?” The receptionist, not paying any attention, absently says “Excuse me? Can I help you?” And Terry freaks out, shrieking “Just tell me where he is!” And the receptionist says “Please! Cam down! Or I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” It may not come through in reading, but both of their reactions are just so OFF from each other, and there’s just something SO ridiculous about this receptionist going to ASK this hysterical woman to leave [you want Natascha to lean threateningly across the desk and say “Ask away, bitch!”]. Then the receptionist tells her where Mike is, even though it was clear she wasn’t listening when Natascha told her the name. You have to cling to things like that when a movie’s this dire.

Anyway, soon enough it’s over. I can’t even bother going into the ending. There were some hallucinations, which I always enjoy, but here they were so quick and lame a music video-ish that they didn’t raise a thrill. Oh, I forgot to mention the moment earlier on when Natascha looks at the Fear site and shields the eyes of her kitty, saying “Oh [cat name] you shouldn’t see this.” The disc cover I had said it was 114 minutes, but it ended after a mere 90, and I was SO glad. The trailer tries hard to sell this as a viable idea for a movie that someone might want to see, though I guess you can’t be trying all that hard with a line like “Access all evil.”

SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?

No, there is no reason for anyone to sit through this. Unless you’re like Stephen Dorff’s mother or something.