At time of writing Feardotcom is down as the 53rd worst rated movie on IMDB and I truly don't understand why. Let's make something perfectly clear, this is a bad movie but it's in no way bad to that degree.

Starring Stephen "Blade" Dorff, Natascha "Truman Show" McElhone, industry veteran Stephen Rea, one of my all time favorite actors Jeffrey Combs and the token cameo appearance by Udo Kier it certainly does have a decent roster.

It tells the story of a website which when visited gives you 48hrs before you go insane and die. Basically it's Ringu/The Ring (1998) just with tweaks. Sadly those tweaks aren't very good and the movie has come out as a bit of a confused mess.

I get what they were trying to do and disagree with other reviewers that the film didn't make sense, it really did. It just wasn't very good and it felt like such a great cast were thoroughly wasted on this, especially considering it's a blatant ripoff of The Ring which had its US remake the very same year this came out.

Bad film? Absolutely. One of the worst? Hardly.

The Good:

Natascha McElhone and Jeffrey Combs

The Bad:

Stephen Rea and Jeffrey Combs feel wasted

Plot falls apart

Takes a lot from other films

Not far in the movie I realized I was watching a terrible version of 'Ringu', the Japanese movie that inspired a very good US movie named 'The Ring'. It has the same elements. A medium that kills because you watch it (in 'The Ring' a videotape, here an internet-site), a little girl that is probably the key to solve the problem, a woman and a guy searching for the answer, both saw the site and therefor they both have to hurry, and why they have to hurry has something to do with earlier events. Here they have 48 hours to solve this mystery that involves The Doctor, a killer who broadcasts live killings over the internet. Well, not just killings. He tortures a woman for a long time and in the end there must be a point where the woman asks him to be killed. And so it is done.

To tell more about the messy plot would be stupid. I am not even sure if I understand everything. After you have seen the internet-site you die of your worst fear in 48 hours, that I did understand, but why do 'infected' people see the little girl over and over again while she herself was killed as an adult? I probably missed it but like I said it doesn't really matter. The scary visuals have something admirable. The images are really haunting but again I liked the videotape from 'The Ring' a lot more. May be you will like it for the images and some scary moments, but I think you can find a better movie. 'The Ring' may be.

I hate horror movies that evolve into a waste of time. The plot becomes too unbelievabe, and gets across as stupid. This film starts out all right, and is a cross between 8mm and Videodrome. The idea of a virus invading the mind threw the optic nerve, and attacking the eletormagnetic impulses in the mind is scary, and I hope will never become a reality. Instead of following up on this scary idea, the movie become too unbelievable. It contains idiotic scenes where the viewer says to himself you got to be kidding! I wish I saved the $15 for my wife and myself, but it has been a awful summer for movies. 3/10