Fear Dot Com: Review By B. Alan Orange

Code Orange Alert #39006: feardotcom.com

I'm just sitting here, mere inches away from opening up my veins. Life is pointless, and I'm totally bored. There doesn't seem to be anything left to live for. Movieweb fired me, the Television is my only friend; and even she treats me like a bitch. DVD Tuesday has lost most of its grandeur. With no other options at hand, I wandered over to the Warner Brothers' lot and asked if they had anything new to show me. Oblivious to the fact that I'd been eradicated from my MW post, they rolled out their next big release in my honor. After I finish telling you about it, I'm going to go back to my little shoebox of a hole and throw a belt over the shower curtain rod. And, swing.

Yup, it was that good?

Feardotcom.com? Hmm, they couldn't even pony up the money to buy out fear.com? From the look of things, it wasn't worth the effort. Maybe the owner of this domain name refused to sell it. I pity them; their site will forever be associated with an almost unwatchable, unsightly homage to pop-up banners. The title flexes its vacuolar muscle, evoking thoughts of doom. It's one of those headings used to automatically insight an abhorrent atmosphere. Yes, we're promised a horror film. Something evil and thrilling. Too bad Feardotcom doesn't live up to that initial promise. There's nothing frightening about it at all. It's not creepy, it's not funny, it's not spine-tingling in the least bit. It's nothing more than a minor blip on our spook show circuit radar screen, and it's sure to stutter the careers of everyone involved. Even the craft service guy has some explaining to do. I bet he's why Stephen Dorff spends his on-screen time grimacing as though he's got a belly full of bad Mexican food.

Wait, I take that back. The two things I fear most are 1) Being so bored by a film that I look to the floor for some excitement. And 2) Not knowing what the Hell is going on during the duration of said film. Feardotcom excels at delivering these elements. So, I guess it does keep its promise. Does anyone understand what's going on here? Does anyone care? I can't imagine the lowliest of cinephiles digging a nugget of joy out of this train wreck. Take me for instance; I thrive on crap. This goes above and beyond the call of duty, and should be buried like Disney's frozen blue corpse...

Oh, wait. Will you look at that? It is being buried, here at the ass end of Summer, right next to Pluto Nash and S1M-ONE. Triple X and Signs may just very well stay lodged at #1 until the end of September.

Let's see? The Ring is about a videocassette. You watch it, and seven days later you die. Feardotcom is about a website. You log in, and within 48 hours, you're dead. Strange that these kinds of things always happen in twos; we had Reign of Fire and Eight Legged Freaks open within a week of each other. Spy Kids and xXx opened on the same day. Now we've got these two potential losers being released within weeks of each other. About the Ring? Does anyone still watch VHS tapes? Why isn't this mysterious white noise locked on a DVD? Oh, 'cause the chapter stops would flip-flop the process and there'd be no telling when you'd die. Not to mention that the layer-change would trigger a slight pause, rendering the content powerless.

I've watched the 30-second TV spot seven times now. That means I'll be dead in 45 years. Heck, I'll probably be dead in less than 23 minutes, anyway. My guess is that the videotape contains a bootleg version of 'Slap Her, She's French'. (I saw that seven days ago, and now I pretty much want to kill myself.) The content of feardotcom is a little more complicated. I'm still not sure I understand the ramifications of it all. After this and the House on Haunted Hill remake, I'd say that director William Malone is edging for the immaculate title: King of Muddle.

It's not that the storyline is all too complicated, it's just edited in a very perplexing way. Huge chunks of exposition have been left out, culminating in this stew of confusion. Characters disappear and reappear without reason. And even after it's over, you're still not sure what just went on. I'll try to explain it as best I can...

You see, there's this website that people log on to, and two days later they're found dead. What's on this website? Oh, just a mad doctor who tortures and kills pretty gap-toothed girls found at an arthouse theater box office window. Except, he has nothing to do with this apparent web-surfing genocide. No, it's one of his past victims, who has turned herself into a ghost built like a bolt of electricity. She's taken residency in the phone lines. (Those with a cable modem can count their lucky stars.) This spark of a spirit shoots out at paying customers in a blinding flash of light. She has little interest in exacting revenge on the man who killed her. Instead, she sets out to bug feardotcom.com subscribers until they go insane. Why? Because they are paying to watch other women, once like herself, die at the hands of an insane man.

Often times she'll appear as this 'Children of the Damned' albino moppet who leads her victims astray. Sure, this all sounds kind of neat; a bit different. The problem lies within the way Malone has executed his plot. No insight is given into the life of the little girl. Is she innocence lost? Who's innocence are we talking about? Only at end credits do we finally get a chance to put everything together. Those with a lack of attention span will be utterly befuddled. We have to suffer through some inept detective work, and figure things out, pretty much, on our own. We see a Crime Scene Investigator pull a dead body out of an aqueduct, but there's never any indication that this is the little pigtailed girl. The idea that she's locked in telephone poles is never clearly explained. There's a drunk in a bar who may or may not know the answers to these puzzling questions, but we never return to his character after the initial set up. After everything was over and done with, I had to scratch my head. Did the projectionist leave out an important reel of film?

The sad thing is; if he had, I would have shaken his hand for making the thing that much shorter. It's not long; it's actually mercifully laconic. But that's beside the point. None of it is interesting, and I lost all want and need to stare at the screen within the first ten minutes. The sooner I was able to get out of that screening room, the sooner I could get to slicing open my wrists. Even when I had nothing else to do but waist time, this was an overwhelming waist of that wasted time. And huge portions of it are hard to look at. Not in a disturbing, grotesque way. Feardotcom is shot in pitch-black tones; maybe to give it that creepy, waxed-out vibe so predominate in noir thrillers.

The thing is so dark in contrasting hues, if they showed it at a drive-in theater; it would completely disappear into the night sky becoming this inadvertent chasm for every star in the vicinity. Sure, horror movies aren't meant to be eye pleasing. They're not meant to be this vacant, either. Feardotcom.com doesn't earn any points for style or originality. Though, it does try to stray from the slasher/monster element that pretty much dominates the horror genre at the moment. Fear earns its only bit of praise in having the nerve to actually kill its main protagonist off. Usually, when the good guy gets shot, he comes back at the last minute like some resurrected Jesus sent forth to enslave the beast. Not here; Stephen Dorff actually slips off into that great void. If I can't say anything else positive, at least I can say that this film has some balls, however shriveled up they may be.

I haven't seen The Ring yet, though they've already made it twice in Japan, and then, once again in Korea. US remakes of foreign films, with the exception of Just Visiting, almost always suck a big fat donkey dick. Yeah, I'll be missing it, but don't expect to see me weep. I'd rather be dead than have to sit through another crap film. With the release of Feardotcom being tagged onto the end of August, I'd have to say that this has truly been the worst month for films this year, thus far.

Oh, wait a minute. How can I even say that when I haven't seen Blue Crush yet? Forget my inane babbling. I can't toss myself into the grave just yet. Not with Sanoe Lake occupying fifty feet of screen space in a bikini. I may live to see another day, unless she doesn't live up to expectations. And there is the fact that I'll have to suffer through 80 minutes of Michelle Rodriguez...

Ah, on second thought, forget that movie. I think I'll just go put a shotgun in my mouth right now...

PS - Don't alert the Webmaster that I've posted yet another pointless, lame review. I had to sneak this sh*t on here just for my hatemail contingent. Here's one last beer to hopefully seeing you all at my funeral?