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Movie Review by The Cryptkeeper
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07.15.09
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With four corpses on his hands, New York City gumshoe Mike Reilly (Stephen Dorff) teams with Department of Health worker Terry Huston (Natascha McElhone) to track down a homicidal sadist who telecasts shocking acts of torture on the Internet. But they have their work cut out: It seems the victims' only link is that they all went toes up 48 hours after logging on to a site known as feardotcom.com. Stephen Rea also stars in this gruesome thriller. -netflix
It's only a movie, it's only a movie. That is what some people say when struck by fear from watching some horror movies. I found myself saying it's only a movie; it's only a movie while watching feardotcom, but not out of terror... but because the movie just didn't make much sense. Being a horror movie, or any movie for that matter... I don't expect complete realism (I am not a moron)... but I do expect the story to make a little bit of sense. Ok, maybe I am being a little harsh; I mean... it made a touch of sense. Much in the same way that people's fascination with $5 dollar foot longs at Subway makes. You gotta eat right. Anyhoo... I did follow what was going on for the most part... just why it was going on, or how... was most of the mystery.
So you have this disgraced doctor who is killing women live on an internet website, and people who have viewed the site end up dying from their greatest fears after 48 hours. Apparently, the doc's favorite victim's soul has been trapped inside of the website and it causing all of the havoc for viewers. Ok, I can understand that... it's only a movie. Just how was this ghost projecting psychic visions in people's heads... enough so that they all basically killed themselves? It's only a movie. I guess I was hanging in there...however, each time they showed someone viewing the site... thousands of other visitors were tuning in as well. Where were all of the bodies of those people? Were thousands of people dying in droves all over the place after visiting this site? How did this guy continue to mask the orientation of this website? Who the hell was his web guy? It's only a movie.
As anyone who has read any of my reviews knows, I do try to find positives in the movies I watch. They didn't give me much to work with in feardotcom, but here goes. There was some full frontal nudity in the form of naked breasts. There, I said it. Don't get me wrong, this was not the worst movie I have ever seen, and it was intriguing on some pseudo, geeky, webmaster level. I found myself more enthralled with thinking about the technology required to pull this kind of site off than anything else. I will say that the doctor was kind of creepy, in that proctologist sort of way. They also had a little girl that appeared as an apparition every so often... and she was kind of creepy (kids always are).
I guess I would tell people to give this one a shot and see what you think for yourself. I won't recommend it as a great movie, but I won't completely discount it as a flop. The effects were decent, although they went a little overboard with some of the strobe effects and such. I guess they had recently acquired some new effects toys and couldn't get enough. Rent this one, watch it, decide... and keep telling yourself... it's only a movie.
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Rating: 4.7 out of 10.0 - 7 votes cast total
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