FearDotCom is a thoroughly lazy, deeply awful hunk of excrement. What makes it so bad is the sheer potential of its concept, squandered on a brain-meltingly generic serial killer story that we've all seen hundreds of times. After a rainy prologue (the whole thing seems to take place in a perpetual monsoon) involving a short lived and painfully underused Udo Kier, we're told that multiple victims have begun to disappear 48 hours after logging on to some freaky website called fear.com. The rest of the film could have gone a bunch of different cool and inspired ways, but nooo… instead it plods along with a Detective (Stephen Dorff) and a sanitation worker (Natasha McElhone should know better than to take a second look at scripts like this) as they hunt the proprietor of the web domain, a nasty yet ultimately boring murderer played by Neil Jordan's thespian of choice, Stephen Rea, who also should know better than to wander into this mess. Now, all that could be forgiven, seeing as how potential is pisssed away every hour in Hollywood, it's just par for the course. But where the film really, truly messes the bed is it's DVD art. I remember specifically avoiding the aisle that housed this flick back in the days of blockbuster, because the images on the cover were so uniquely scary. There's a horrific looking mannequin girl, dead bodies arranged in a way that would give Dali nightmares and just a general uneasy look to the box. Thing is, none of that stuff actually shows up in the film anywhere. It's either a con job, butchered editing or the industry's hugest distribution error. For years I was petrified by those images, only to finally get a chance to see the thing, and go: "This?! This is the film that that wickedly memorable horror show of a cover advertised!? Weak…" All we get out of it is a dour, boring, barely conscious bottom of the barrel shocker outing that leaves no lasting impression whatsoever. You're better off buying the DVD, whipping the disc off your balcony like a frisbee and framing the cover on the living room wall to freak your kids out.

Feardotcom (2002): Dir: William Malone / Cast: Stephen Dorff, Natascha McElhone, Stephen Rea, Jeffrey Combs, Udo Kier: Computer virus problem taken to new extremes. When your computer addresses you in a female voice, then you need to limit the amount of alcohol you consume. Four murders are linked to a web site and one jackass is found clutching a book. He was struck by a subway train because he thought he saw a little girl on the track. This book is not an anniversary issue of Hustler either although the shock expression on his face would suggest it. Stephen Dorff plays a detective and Natascha McElhone plays a Department of Health researcher and they discover that viewers witness a murder and given 48 hours to find a girl with a ball. Well, that could be any variety of girls, especially if you watch sports. Screenplay has all the potential of a roll of toilet paper. William Malone does his best but this is about as stupid as his previous gore fest House on Haunted Hill. Besides Dorff and McElhone there is Stephen Rea and Jeffrey Combs and not one of these characters knows how to use their brain. Udo Kier even makes an appearance in this dog show, and he apparently has a reputation for making bad film choices. Viewers are urged to log onto something more entertaining such as The Simpsons, or, lord forbid, The Golden Girls. Score: 3 / 10

Maybe it's because I'm 62 years old and have seen lots of real horror in my life, but this movie was beyond boring. The usual staccato light shows that are supposed to add 'layer upon layer' of images to create a terrifying effect do nothing more than get me dizzy at which point my attention also wanes. The effect they were trying for? This definitely wasn't it. Fear is a basic human emotion, and it peaks when it involves those things we are most familiar with and that suddenly take a wrong turn. If a movie doesn't call for our imaginative participation, it falls flat, like this one did. If the setting had been some average kid's room instead of a dismal otherworldly big-city mausoleum of a flat, that might have helped. But there's just too much wrong with this movie for anyone to bother with it.

I caught this movie on Lifetime (my favorite channel along with WeTV) and I thought since it was on their (they have such good taste for REAL dramas) network that it must be great. Instead this movie offended me. For one this movie was so scary that I was afraid to get on my computer for days, much less the internet! When I was watching this I had to turn on all my lights! I don't like getting scared! Plus this was too internet themed! I think it is a bad idea exploiting women like this! The only reason I gave it a point five was because Lifetime has great taste. Maybe they saw something in this? I didn't. Anyways don't see this movie! It's too scary, and too internet themed!