Rating: Summary: Should have popped w/ the .com bust. Review: Like some illegitimate child of the Ring, Seven, and Nightmare on Elm Street, this movie might have had a chance if it would have been released prior to Ringu and the Ring. As it stands, it's derivative, unoriginal, and sloppily acted / paced. The gal from Ronin reacts like a statue and displays almost as much acting ability for the most part of the movie; at least she has a nice facial structure and eyes. The nonsensical plot involves a tortured and eventually killed victim of a sadistic doctor reaching out through the electronic medium of the Internet [Samara goes digital?]. She punishes anyone that watches the snuff-cam set up by the doctor. Eventually everyone gets their comeuppance including the Dr. Unfortunately we can't get back the lost time devoted to watching.
Rating: Summary: the movie was garbage. (period) Review: Firstly, let me just say that 'The Ring' is the best scary movie ever made. 'feardotcom.com' is a sorry excuse of a scary movie. The story and concept was clearly hijacked from 'The Ring'. I don't know if it was the actors or the directors, but this movie just stunk big time. To top it all off, when you think of the whole concept of the movie and it's astounding resemblence to that of 'The Ring' it only makes you the viewer furious at these cowards who could'nt come up with their own scary story, and had to go and steal somebody elses. Sure they added some of their own things to create some kind of originality, but that only made the movie appear more bootleg and feeble than anything else. I gave this movie a -5 out of 5. And lastly, somebody should sue the producers for this eye soar.
Rating: Summary: Nicked Plot, Bad Acting, & Computers Not using Microsoft!!! Review: The plot was almost completely nicked from "The Ring." Just replace the feardotcom website with the mysterious video from "The Ring," and replace 48 hours with 7 days. Also, they couldn't even come up with a different place from "The Ring" to place the body than in water. In both movies, the stars have to avenge the wrongful deaths of the "spirit girls." Why? Because, otherwise the "spirit girls" will murder them. Of course, this begs the question: "Why help a murderer in the first place?" Are we truly supposed to feel pity for these spirits who were wrongfully murdered, when in fact they are murdering many more people than their initial murderers?At any rate, the acting was terrible, even for a horror movie. Also, I thought it was pretty lame that the movie couldn't even use www.fear.com, as the name implies. Since the movie was relegated to use the redundant www.feardotcom.com, shouldn't the name of this atrocious movie be "feardotcomdotcom?" Lastly, couldn't they have at least put a familiar web browser on the computers in the movie. We see an obviously-contrived unfamiliar "web browser" that looks nothing like Internet Explorer or Netscape. To ask us to believe that there is a spirit world in the Internet is one thing, but to ask us to believe that there is a place where nobody uses Internet Explorer or Netscape is just ludicrous. Come on. Bill Gates would have purchased all the land and installed Windows on all the computers there if there was. Please do not waste your time or money on this movie. For me, there are now 2 wasted hours in my life that I can never get back. I only hope the same doesn't happen to you!
Rating: Summary: Good Idea, Boring Movie Review: I was actually thinking of giving this movie one star, but the reason I gave it two stars is because I think the idea of the movie was okay. People dying of their greatest fear 48 hours after entering a web site. But that was the only good thing about this movie. Natascha McElhone's acting was "not good". Another reason why I gave this movie two stars instead of one is because there are only about two kind-of-scary scenes, but the majority of them are just too boring. I was about halfway done watching the movie when I thought, why am I still watching this? I continued watching it, thinking that the ending would be better, but everything kept on worsening. The ending was confusing, pointless, and not scary at all. When I finished watching this movie, I realized I had just thrown my money away. This is probably the most regretful, shameful, and worthless buy I'd made. So, if you don't want to waste your time watching a bad movie, do not watch this. I'm just warning you.
Rating: Summary: Awful.dot. Com Review: Disturbing and distressing images on the screen that will kill anyone who logs on after 48 hours? Tortured spirits bent on revenge? A dead little girl who seems so sweet yet is so evil? Does these plot lines have a familiar 'ring' to them? Of course they do, because they are straight out of The Ring/Ringu. Yet copying, or 'adaptation' in itself is not a bad thing if the direction,script and acting are competent enough to pull it off,but I am afraid not only Fear dot com is a bad copy of the highly superior Ring, which in itself is adapted from the Japanese Ringu, but it is a really bad movie on all levels. The problem with it is an overbearing direction and script that are truly confused and can't seem to find a coherent or plausible structure.William Malone who has the awful House On Hunted Hill to his name among other average B horror films, manages to annoy instead of scare me with his fast camera shots,digital images, and grating soundtrack.And he also manages something very few directors are able to do, casting excellent actors,(Stephen Dorff, Natascha Mc Elhon and Stephen Rea) and bringing out their worst performances ever! Unexplicably they all deliver their lines in a very slow and slurry manner, and have a 'what on earth am I doing here' look throughout the film. Well, to be fair, the film could have been far better, dealing with the 'evil'and 'soul' of the net(a subject that is interesting and can have a social,philosophical and psychological dimensions), but alas all is lost because of the mediocre direction and script. If the minimum requirement you seek in a horror movie is to be scared or at least feel some kind of tension or shock then Fear dot com will only deliver that kind of tension and anxiety that comes from the feeling that you have just wasted a good hour and half of your life! Avoid!!
Rating: Summary: Could've easily been the next "SEVEN"... Review: ...but the problem is that it tries way too hard to do exactly that. Stephen Dorff tries hard to be Brad Pitt throughout the entire film and Rea tries to be Kevin Spacey aka "John Doe" throughout. It just doesn't work. I do like the whole "if you visit this site, you die" concept, and the innitial premise sounded rather interesting, but in the end, it plops. If you still intend to see this movie, just don't expect that much from it.
Rating: Summary: Derivative and Misogynistic Review: You see there is this website. And when people log onto it they see this strange woman. And after they log on they have 48 hours and then they die mysteriously and inexplicably, their faces twisted in fear. Before they do so they have strange sightings of a mysterious young girl, her face partly shrouded in very long hair. Our heroine and our hero set out to investigate and, in the course of doing so, of course, they log on themselves. Can they survive... Remind you of something? Judging it be its fruit, the project of making this film would seem to have been premised on the thought that Nakata's wonderful "Ringu", while ripe for ripping off, was marred by the following failings: (1) it was genuinely scary; (2) it was original, imaginative and memorable; (3) it was well-directed and conspicuously free of cliché; above all (4) it was wholly lacking in shamefully cynical footage of highly eroticised acts of violence against attractive young women wearing hardly any clothes. In any case, if the aim was to make a film reminiscent of Nakata's but with all these features very thoroughly corrected, they have succeeded perfectly. The result is a sad waste of time.
Rating: Summary: At least it had a good concept... Review: Really the concept of this movie is pretty good. Unfortunatly the list of good things about this movie ends there. Most of the movie is extremely hard to see or comprehend. While there is a little bit of entertainment value (I did watch the whole thing because I wanted to see what happened at the end) this movie is not really worth paying for, I watched it on a movie channel. If you do see this movie it's one of those movies that you only want to see once and at the end it kind of leaves you saying "huh?"
Rating: Summary: Not bad; interesting concept Review: I watched this movie late one night and was rather intrigued by the concept. It's not a great movie, but I don't think it's a bad movie either. It's certainly worth watching at least once. I thought the movie was well cast but the story/script was choppy. That was, perhaps, it's biggest problem. Yes, many things could have been better explained throughout the film. Some of the visualizations were overdone. I'm not generally a fan of horror movies, but I did find this one interesting, intriguing, and worth watching. Give it a try -- you might be surprised and like it.
Rating: Summary: Cast and Production Values Deserve Better Review: I liked this movie the first time I saw it...when it was called THE RING. (In fact, you'd have to see THE RING to understand what in the world's going on in this movie. The whole finding-the-body-will-lift-the-curse thing. It's too bad. The cast deserved better).
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