The tyranist's thoughts
This is the first movie I've reviewed for the HFC that I managed to see at a preview screening. Owing to circumstances, however, I'm posting this review after the movie has already made it to the theatre. Rats!
So there's this website that people are visiting called Feardotcom and unfortunately for them, they are dying 48 hours later. In step Stephen Dorff and Natascha McElhone to investigate. Well naturally they go to the website too. The clock is started.
Rish and I really debated whether this ripped off Ring but in the end decided that there is enough different about the plot and the way the hook works that while it is definitely influenced by that great Japanese movie, it isn't a real rip-off. Besides, when asked, William Malone denied that he even knew anything about a movie called Ring.
Jeffrey Combs has a part in this one and it is nice to see him on the big screen again. That man has the strangest charisma, but I can't help but love him. Dorff and McElhone aren't too bad either. Some of the effects are especially nice and the plot is pretty intense. There really isn't a let up beginning to end. There are two major plotlines that are intertwined to the point of inextricability, but that really only adds to the drama.
Check this one out in the theatre if you can, I'm sure it is much better there than it will be on the small screen. Not that it won't be good on the small screen, it's just that nothing this intense is ever as good on the small screen.

Rish's Reviews
In August 2002, tyranist and I capped off our semi-successful Fangoria Weekend of Horrors experience with a free screening of Fear.com. I’ve spoken to the director twice since seeing the film, and though I LOATHED Malone's last film (The House on Haunted Hill), and found myself enjoying this one way more than I probably should've. But hey, kiss my grits, Mel, I, for one, found it very scary.
Jeffrey Combs, great as usual, played a less-than-savoury character I still loved. Natasha MacElhone is attractive. And this may be the first movie I ever liked Stephen Dorff in. But then again, maybe I didn't (after all, when the girl tells him "don't go to that website," he rushes home to log onto it). The film had an interesting look (a cross between film noir and futuristic), a neat idea behind it, and a disturbing-looking ghost character that appears on the posters (Malone claimed he did the design for it, so maybe the guy has talent after all).
But it was so darn reminiscent of Ring, which we saw the night before. Lots of little things, and a couple of big things were either close or the same. There was the odd, pointless scene where MacElhone goes corpse hunting alone at night...underwater that both didn't fit and was very similar to a scene in Ring). There were lots of plotholes, too. Characters did inexplicable things, and the love subplot didn't work, problems that must have come from a much longer version of the film. The theatrical edit still felt long, though.
Still, the movie was intensely scary.
Scarier even, than Signs? Well, I didn't wake up thinking aliens were reaching for me in the dark after seeing this. On the other hand, Signs didn’t have an evil albino ghost child in it. So, I'm a little torn, faithful listeners.
I'd Recommend It To: Fans of surreal, creepy Horror. And surreal, creepy Horror fans.
Note: A young and thoughtful couple in the row in front of us had brought their five year old. And they call ME a bastard.