Fear. Everyone’s got one. Some people are afraid of the dark. Some get creeped out by spiders. Others can’t handle heights.

And then there’s the fear that paralyzes movie critics worldwide: the fear of the bad movie.

Those who suffer from bad movie phobia will want to steer clear of “FearDotCom,” the latest film in Hollywood’s endless quest to scare the crap out of audiences.

The movie’s got all the classic horror movie elements: stormy nights, scary scenery, psycho serial killers. But what’s really scary is how ineffectively they are utilized in “FearDotCom”. All of the digitally enhanced spooks and the cheap scares can’t cover up the script’s ludicrous and hard-to-follow premise and clich characters.

“FearDotCom” opens, like most movies in this genre, with a mysterious death. An old man is found dead on subway tracks, but his horrified expression indicates more. Enter the police officer, Detective Mike Reilly (Stephen Dorff, “Deuces Wild”). Reilly, it seems, is no stranger to mysterious cases.

“We’ve all got cases we can’t solve. Don’t let it get to you,” warns Reilly’s partner. Reilly is still haunted by another one of his cases — that of Alistair Pratt (Stephen Rea, “The End Of The Affair), a serial killer known as “The Doctor” who lures female victims into his clutches and slowly tortures and murders them for a viewing audience over the Internet. Throughout the movie, there are flashes to Pratt’s sadistic interactions with his latest victim.

But for the most part, we stay with Reilly and his partner, Department of Health worker Terry Houston (Natascha McElhone, “The Truman Show”) as more and more bodies pile up. Soon, the two make a connection to feardotcom.com, a website that all four of the victims had visited 48 hours prior to their deaths.

Convinced that the Web site holds the key to the case, and guilt-ridden after the death of a colleague involved in the investigation, Mike and Terry both reluctantly view the site in search of clues. As time ticks down, they must work fast to identity the supernatural being stalking them and her connection to “The Doctor” before they fall victim to feardotcom.com themselves.

The only stand out performance is McElhone, who appears here in a far cry from her breakout role in “The Truman Show.” Her character starts off bright-eyed and competent as she engages in light flirtation with Mike and dives head-first into her strange new case. But as time goes on, and the creepiness continues, she begins to transform into a more primal creature.

Otherwise, the acting was sub-par. There was nothing wrong with Dorff’s portrayal of the tortured police officer or with Rea’s performance as the sadistic serial killer, but there was nothing extraordinary about them either. Any actors could have filled these stereotypical roles with equal success.

The director, William Malone (“House On Haunted Hill”), sure does love shadows. Even in daytime scenes, you can sometimes barely make out the character’s expressions because they are masked in so much darkness.

Malone goes to a great deal of effort to visually enhance the script’s scares through digital effects, but goes overboard. Seriously, did it have to start pouring rain every time something scary was going to happen? Also pouring throughout the movie was blood, in measures that got ridiculously excessive.

The script by relative newcomer Josephine Coyle also could have used some work. It seems to pull elements straight out of other more successfully produced movies, such as “What Lies Beneath” and “Silence of the Lambs”. The plot was less than coherent, with some scenes inserted just as an excuse to drop the protagonists in another dim-lit environment.

Be afraid, be very afraid of “FearDotCom.” Your time can be better spent this weekend surfing the Internet than logging into this movie.

Christopher Reilly is a junior magazine major. His reviews appear Fridays in the Daily Orange. E-mail him at passpopcorn@yahoo.com.

Published on September 5, 2002 at 12:00 pm