Ah, a horror movie.
Lately I’ve been into the horror scene quite a bit…
Surprising for the world’s biggest wuss, but true just the same.
I hadn't seen the remake of The House On Haunted Hill, but eventually caught it on TV and thought it was pretty cool. So since the same director, William Malone, was behind Fear Dot Com too, I figured it may be pretty cool.
Critics have not been kind though, nor was the opening weekend box office.
Still, I had nothing better to do (imagine that!). So off I went…
The tag line for Fear Dot Com is: “The last site you’ll ever see”. That’s because the premise of the movie is that you see this website, and 48 hours later, you're dead. Well, I think the Japanese sorta beat us to it, because Ringu, an American remake (The Ring) of which is soon to be released here, is about a video tape that when watched brings the viewer death seven days later.
Hmmm, the recently canceled Witchblade TV show recently had an episode with a "deadly" website too. And they say originality is dead…
Anyway, there’s a lot going on this movie. It’s a dark movie, figuratively and literally. In fact, it’s too dark, in the literal sense. I kept wishing someone would turn on a freaking light already. There’s good acting from Stephen Dorff, who just can’t seem to catch a break. This movie doesn’t seem long for box office life, and his last flick, Deuces Wild may as well have gone straight to video. But he’s a good actor and he deserves better than some of the dialogue in this flick. Dialogue is definitely not a strong point of the movie.
Natascha McElhone is pretty good here, but I think I liked her more for her appearance than her acting. She’s very pretty! But she’s a pretty good actress, and she too deserved better dialogue and a little more than facial reactions to work with.
Stephen Rea…well, I dunno. I guess a paycheck is a paycheck…
There are also two cult icons in the mix, but I aint telling who.
I mentioned there’s a lot going on here…well, there’s too much really. Malone gets credit for establishing mood, that’s for sure. It's pretty creepy. But he also gets a little too MTV…so many quick cuts and sudden flashes and weird noises. It’s almost like abstract art. I don’t like abstract art.
For all the flashiness however, there's also kind of cheap look to the movie at times.
When the story finally gets kinda cohesive, it ends up being too little too late.
There was something to work from here, but they kinda dropped the ball.