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fear dot com
Warner Bros.


3.4

based on 20 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 29 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA 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.)

GENRE(S):	Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Josephine Coyle Moshe Diamant (story)
DIRECTED BY:	William Malone
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: January 14, 2003 Video: January 14, 2003 Theatrical: August 30, 2002
RUNNING TIME:	100 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	Germany / Luxembourg / Canada / USA

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

The story is a mess, some of the images offensive, the acting under par and the dialogue silly.

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.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Shameless exercise in high-tech sadism.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

I feel guilty and somehow unclean. And all I did was watch it.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Would have made a hell of a short -- but falls flat on its hyperstylized face as a feature.

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.

Film Threat Eric Campos

This movie is plain stupid from the get go, but at least it looks good.

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.

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.

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.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

A depraved, incoherent, instantly disposable piece of hackery.

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.

The average user rating for this movie is 3.4 (out of 10) based on 29 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

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.

Tara P. gave it a 10:
I think Fear Dot Com was a rather interesting movie, kept me in shock the whole time.

fear dot com Warner Bros.

fear dot com
Warner Bros.