‘Are you ready to play?’: reviewing “Feardotcom”
Poster // ApolloMedia Distribution via IMDb
By: Magnus Blanchard-Rockhill
Staff-Writer & Advertising Co-Manager
This review contains spoilers for the entirety of “Feardotcom” (2002).
A chill rises in the air. Halloween is within sight. It’s the perfect time of year to force those around you to watch poorly reviewed horror movies. Though this week’s pick, 2002’s “Feardotcom”, is maybe not the one to choose if you want to have a fun time. It has earned its 3.4/10 on IMDb.
It genuinely upsets me that this movie has a score that is one-tenth of a point higher than last issue’s “Insecticidal”, which was at least enjoyable. Director William Malone and writers Moshe Diamant, Josephine Coyle and Holly Payberg-Torroija have not made a terrible film by any means, but they have committed the cardinal sin of making an annoyingly boring horror movie.
First, the plot. Essentially, there is a scary website that kills people exactly two days after they visit it. There is also a serial killer torturing people. These things are technically connected, but that doesn’t matter for most of the movie. This seems to be taking a lot from “Ring”, not just because of these people consuming media that causes their death in a specific time period. There is also a little ghost girl that heralds their death, as well as a fakeout near the end that I will get into later.
The acting is not great. Mostly it’s very dry, though Natascha McElhone, who plays Terry (one of the main investigators), does a pretty good job. She’s actually the only character that really matters or is likable. That may be too hard on the other actors, though, as it’s more accurate to say that the script is bad. The dialogue is confusing and unrealistic. The movie also feels like horror Cocomelon, with the first half barely having any shots longer than five seconds. Not for any particular effect, either.
I also take issue with how many leaps in logic the characters make in order to further the plot. Four seemingly accidental deaths take place in New York City. Why are we assuming that they are connected? They spend a third of the movie trying to find the connection between the deaths. Why? I do not know. At one point, Terry vaguely announces that she’s done some “research” and found out the greatest fear of one of the murdered people they’re investigating. How did she find that information?
“Ring” has a fun plot point where our main character assumes that if she finds the body of the little girl haunting her and gives it a proper burial, the curse will be lifted. When she finds the body, it turns out that actually this does not lift the curse at all because Sadako does not care and wants to keep getting revenge on the world. “Feardotcom” also, um, does this.
Except in “Ring”, the main character comes to this conclusion through assumption. In “Feardotcom”, our main character is told this by the ghost directly, meaning a precious 15 minutes of this already over-complicated movie are completely irrelevant because the ghost lies for fun.
Honestly most of the reviews for this movie are fair enough. Maybe a little harsh for something that’s mostly just mediocre horror, but it even made someone as forgiving of bad horror movies as me pretty angry. I did find out while reading these reviews that apparently, Jeffrey Combs of “Re-Animator” fame is in this, which I was too blinded by hatred to notice as I was watching. I do NOT recommend. Go watch “Ring” instead. Or “Re-Animator”, for that matter.