Feardotcom

If the setting of Alex Proyas’s Dark City were raped by the plot of Hideo Nakata’s Ringu, the forced coupling would inevitably beget William Malone’s FeardotCom (Gore Verbinski’s The Ring was released two months after Malone’s film, thus was unable to have the honor of being a plagiaree). Put simply, Malone’s film is par for his career: He was demoted to television after having directed a handful of big screen bombs right off the bat. After FeardotCom, Malone should be dually reprimanded once again and, with any luck, his former position will be made permanent.

Amid a killing spree by a Zodiac-esque killer, Alistair Pratt (Stephen Rhea), who goes by the alias, “The Doctor,” four bodies are found, all exhibiting the same symptoms suggestive of some type of infection. Heading the case, detective Mike Reilly (Stephen Dorff) confers with Terry Huston (Natascha McElhone), Department of Health, as the latter reports that no bacteria or virus is responsible. Upon further investigation, it is discovered that all of the deceased expired exactly 48 hours after visiting a website, www.feardotcom.com, which eliminates The Doctor as a suspect for, though he uses the internet to trap his victims, he never utilizes the same url twice. Though apprehensive, the duo consent to entering the website in hopes of unveiling clues, the first of which is a deceased little girl named Jeannine.

Aside from arbitrarily positing a 1930’s New York City setting, we have the unrepentant parroting of Ringu’s plot. Let’s go to the play-by-play:

Unfortunately for his viewers, Malone doesn’t attempt a scene-for-scene Xerox of Nakata’s masterpiece for FeardotCom is plagued by plot holes, narrative inconsistencies, and excessive amounts of illogic. For starters, Jeannine is reported to have suffered from hemophilia. This is all grand and good until we get to the part where The Doctor tortured her prior to her death, even though “just one prick” would inevitably lead to Jeannine’s seemingly instantaneous demise. Second, what is The Doctor’s motivation for his crimes? Third, though Huston is given a sedative by The Doctor, its effects becoming evident as the scene progresses, when good has triumphed, Huston nonchalantly sheds her restraints and bounces over to Reilly without a moment’s dizziness. Speaking of characters, FeardotCom is grossly miscast. Check that, not miscast per se, for we have the right actors for the various roles, they’re just playing the wrong characters. Rhea, with his sorrowful eyes, is no stranger to a police role just as Combs has made a career as a madman but, alas, the roles they were born to play are switched and, considering the script is less than challenging, fails to permit them to rise above the viewers’ steadfast memories of the actors in their trademark roles. What’s left is a static asymmetry for we have a generic plot but, as I said before, we would have been better off if our stereotyped expectations were to have been completely fulfilled. In short, by countering casting expectations, we slam headfirst in “moot.” After our casting realignment, well . . . as for Dorff in order to avoid hurt feelings . . . let’s just go ahead and give him the role of Sykes, Reilly’s throwaway sidekick, and quietly take care of him in the editing room and while we’re at it, make sure we find a female lead who can go the distance because McElhone tosses in the towel at approximately the same time that the plot begins to disintegrate.

However, I must admit that the notion that the Internet formulates its own collective consciousness via networking (the event’s genesis is insinuated to be the Internet’s sheer influence over humanity) and thereby develops the capability to invade the minds of its users is creative. Yet, as impressive as this plot devise might be, it nonetheless paves the way for the film’s greatest missed opportunity: In this regard, keeping the infection theme afloat would have been in screenwriter Josephine Coyle’s best interest because it would have afforded him the byline to transfer a virus from the computer terminal directly to the user’s brain. To be quite honest, regardless of Huston’s denunciation that a biological agent is the responsible party, Coyle might have very well have followed this motif through but, if he did, he didn’t execute it very well in that I’m not the only critic who wasn’t quite sure how everything added up by the closing credits. Perhaps this is what you get when a producer pitches and idea to a writer and not vice versa.

Granted, as Roger Ebert notes, the climax is shot in such a manner that it soundly echoes the German Expressionists (as directed by Salvador Dali). But a scene doth not a movie make just as William Malone isth not a director. The plot inconsistencies and narrative loose ends of FeardotCom aren’t sporadic enough for Malone to get away with stating his agenda was cinematic experience and atmosphere first and foremost, for he leads his viewers with something akin to a plot throughout. However, by the time we get to the end, we jerk our hand away from his sweaty palm, his inadvertent admission that he was lost the entire time. Put simply, Malone should have set out to make a rote, average horror film because his plagiarizing of horror convention atop momentary, sporadic ill-thought out surprise leaves the viewer with a failed, disappointing, and trite cinematic mess with only a little over an hour-and-a-half of wasted life to show for it.

-Egregious Gurnow

• About the Author
• Latest Posts

About Robert Brodmerkel

• Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
• Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
• Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
• Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
• Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
• Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
• A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
• Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
• Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
• Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015