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fear dot com
Overwhelming dislike
Based on 20 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 30 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
Josephine Coyle
Moshe Diamant (story)
Directed by: William Malone
Release Date:
Theatrical: August 30, 2002
DVD: January 14, 2003
Running Time: 100 minutes, Color
Origin: Germany / Luxembourg / Canada / USA
Summary
RATING: R for violence including grisly images of torture, nudity and language
Starring Stephen Dorff, Natascha McElhone, Stephen Rea, Udo Kier, Amelia Shankley, and Jeffrey Combs
A brash young police detective (Dorff) joins forces with a beautiful, ambitious Department of Health researcher (McElhone) to find the answers behind the mysterious deaths of four people who each died 48 hours after logging on to the Internet site Feardotcom. (Warner Bros.)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Strange, how good feardotcom is, and how bad. The screenplay is a mess, and yet the visuals are so creative this is one of the rare bad films you might actually want to see.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
There's potential here for a macabre cult favourite touching on themes of technology and the body-mind split, but the movie's progression into rambling incoherence gives new meaning to the phrase "fatal script error."
Read Full Review >Variety Scott Foundas
Never quite realizes its potential to evoke the real horror of the Internet -- Yet, Malone has given the film a distinctive atmosphere and occasional flashes of his perverse sense of humor.
Read Full Review >New Times (L.A.) Luke Y. Thompson
If sudden loud noises, relentless strobe lights, digital hallucinations and mutilated corpses make you jump, and you feel that nothing more is required for a good time at the movies, welcome to Feardotcom.
Chicago Tribune Robert K. Elder
As scary and minor-chord heavy as FearDotCom can be, there's no big payoff, no logical resolution.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
There's a germ of an interesting idea here, but it's smothered by gloomy cinematography a la "Seven" (1995) and grating implausibilities, like the fact that everyone lives in the kind of cavernous, dankly art-directed dumps that only internet millionaires and trust fund twinkies can afford in the real New York.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
A low-rent, slow-witted horror flick notable chiefly for its hilariously unsuccessful attempt to pass off Luxembourg City as New York City.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
The story is a mess, some of the images offensive, the acting under par and the dialogue silly.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
The film squanders every opportunity (and international-coproduction cent) on by now imitative Nine Inch Nails-video-style visual Goth-goo, and, scarily, forgets to input a plot or script that makes any sense.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Rick Kisonak
I feel guilty and somehow unclean. And all I did was watch it.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Would have made a hell of a short -- but falls flat on its hyperstylized face as a feature.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Made with just enough craft to keep it from being the instantly dated camp howler its title promises, but it's quickly apparent that there's no thought or originality under its grim, familiar surface.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Eric Campos
This movie is plain stupid from the get go, but at least it looks good.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis
The story leapfrogs abruptly from scene to scene, and it makes such a mockery of narrative logic and continuity that the cast tends to look either baffled (Dorff) or as if they're trying to remain unrecognized.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Ernest Hardy
The film, whose clumsy editing and dearth of establishing shots keep the viewer in an unintended state of confusion, is a corpse in its own right: It’s filled with the rotting ideas of far better movies.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Stephen Holden
It is painful to watch an actor as skillful as Mr. Dorff reduced to delivering flat repetitive dialogue that would make any actor look foolish.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
A depraved, incoherent, instantly disposable piece of hackery.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Collin Levey
For the most part, the movie serves up an incomprehensible collage of high-tech voyeurism sprinkled with every hackneyed creep-out trick in the book -- from eerie little ghost girls to melting walls and scurrying cockroaches.
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
The film is a failure in just about every way, save for its acting, which is adequate.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 3.6 (out of 10) based on 30 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Keenan S gave it an8:
Despite what people had to say about it, I really enjoyed this horror flick. I liked the creepy special effects and strange imagery. The actors weren't too shabby and the music was rather enjoyable. It may not have a mind-blowing plot, but I was kept interested throughout the film. Despite the negativity, I still really liked it.
Julie K. gave it a 0:
Keep yourself interested by creating a mental list of all the good movies that this one shamelessly rips off, yet still manages to suck.
Lewis C. gave it a 1:
This movie sucks balls, I too rented it a while back and christ I was pissed with the end result, yeah some parts looked ok but this doesn't save it at all...doesn't surprise me 13yr olds like when their parents are out but to be honest, people who really enjoy a well directed/produced cult horror should steer so clear of this pile of crap!
Marc is right goddammit gave it a 0:
I think the term style over substance was invented for Feardot.com. it's so called plot was so converluted by 35 mins into the film i just wished that someone had given the film a virus. Awful (belive it or not it was worse than the directors other flick House on Haunted Hill)
Jess T. gave it a 10:
This movie was great I think. If really sdcared me I think you should come out with feardotcom2. I really liked the actors. I enjoyed watching it and I had trouble sleeping but I liked to be scared. What ever the others say forget them I loved it because it had a very good plot to it and it was really scary. I am 13 years old and I know I'm under age to be seeibg it but it was great.
Emerys gave it a 2:
PAIN. That describes this movie. I rented it a while back - I'm a horror movie buff, and a goth, thank you, and it STILL sucked. Every director seems to think that gore and tits is enough to really scare people. You have to have at least some semblence of continuous plot, even if that ends up being mainly bad plot. This was confusing, unresolved, with angst and love thrown in at the end to try and make it a "boo hoo, poor girl" thing. A very few parts of it had good camera effects... but the rest was awful. And just for the record, if anyone goes alone to an abandoned studio after getting an offer from a crazy "director" to act... Well. Cleansing the gene pool.
Ben W. gave it a 1:
ARRRRRRRRRRGH! this movie was unbearable, i feel sick for spending even 3 dollars renting this. this movie SO wishes it was "the ring" and it doesn't even come CLOSE. i feel so disgusted after watching this i had to sit in the shower for half an hour.
