(2002)

review by:

8-16-03

Written by: Josephine Coyle Directed by: William Malone Starring: Stephen Dorff, Natascha McElhone, Stephen Rea, Jeffrey Combs

Four bodies turn up in New York City, and young detective Mike Reilly decides to team up with ambitious Department of Health researcher Terry Huston in order to uncover the cause behind their violent and inexplicable deaths. The only common factor shared by the victims? Each died exactly 48 hours after logging on to feardotcom.com. Of course both Mike and Terry log on and figure out that they are fucked unless they can solve the mystery. They must help this ghost chick get vengeance on her killer or she will kill them. If there was ever a rip-off, no creativity, piece of Hollywood shit, this would be it. This is The Ring on the internet, so if you saw that (which I suggest you do because its awesome) this movie is already ruined. True, Feardotcom did come out relatively close to The Ring, but you know how it goes in Hollywood: one studio gets a synopsis of what another studio is doing and quickly tries to put something together at the last minute in order to counter-attack it. The biggest thing that upset me about the movie is that there is absolutely NO CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT!!!!!! Being a Star Trek fan I must point this out (this kinda falls under the character development thing I was talking about). As all my fellow Trekkies know, Jeffrey Combs is know for his many recurring characters within the mighty franchise. Now when I first heard he was in this, I had a relatively good outlook. He played Mike’s partner, who for some reason never works with him, and has a total of maybe five lines through the movie. And to show you how bad the writing and character development is, here is an example: Mike meets the ghost’s killer and basically says, “Yah, the police are coming.” Killer responds saying, “Oh, you mean your partner? Oh I killed him. There is his body. Yep I know he looks all gory and you can imagine what kind of death he had, but I didn’t want to show it on camera because the one chick from The Truman Show swimming in a sunken refinery is so much more entertaining.” I give this a bad and not a horrible because I do salute the visuals to some degree. They were able to take a bad script and put a few cool things to it, plus it is directed by William Malone. Speaking of which, why did you do this movie? It sucked! I had respect for you after House on the Haunted Hill now you shit this out. Did someone kidnap your children or something? AHH! Reviewing this film has brought a mighty headache upon me, I must lie down on my couch throne and watch Jeffrey Combs in his true glory, covered in make up as a Vorta named Weyoun trying to enslave the Alpha Quadrant under Dominion Rule.

Rating