Here's my friend Dov's review of the film that is taking home all the festival awards...feardotcom.com and another less heartfelt review from theOnion. and if you really want to see a scary website, check Madd Matt's Guide To An Early Halloween
Feardotcom is probably the most interesting movie about a haunted Web site I've yet to see. How someone can program in Java and HTML from beyond the grave is unclear, but what this movie lacks in clarity, it makes up for in gore. The film is centered around a cop (Stephen Dorf) who is unable to find a man who tortures and kills people while video-taping the act and broadcasting it over the Internet. The Website, feardotcom.com is not, however the site from where you can watch a murder, but a haunted Website, inhabited by the spirit of a woman whom he murdered a few years before. If someone stumbles across this site, they will die in 48 hours immediately after blood begins running from their eyes and nose like Reno Russo in Outbreak.
Okay, I can buy all of that, but why is URL of this deadly site feardotcom.com and not just fear.com? I threw caution to the wind and checked out both Web sites and learned that there actually is no site at the domain fear.com and the actual feardotcom.com is just the movie's Web site, not the interactive dominatrix ghost woman who can program the Web's only homicidal home page. Think it doesn't make sense for some digital ghost to avenge her own death by killing more people instead of just spamming them like everyone else? Well, that's also unclear, but she seems to want to motivate anyone who visits her page to find her dead body. Easy, right? Well, the ghost is not quite so direct and gives almost no clues to her whereabouts which are, incidentally, at an old flooded Steel Mill which is occupied by homeless blind old ladies and rats. You also have to open the body up and find the torturer's address inside a lipstick case, and then finally kill her killer to avoid being killed by her spirit. Fear is the most powerful motivator, right? Well, fear did not motivate me to walk out on this movie, but human decency does compel me to advise that you not pay to see this movie at theaters, but wait three months will it will most assuredly be seen on USA Up All Night.
