‘Feardotcom’ a showcase for misogyny

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In theaters

FEARDOTCOM, directed by William Malone, written by Josephine Coyle, based on a story by Moshe Diamant, 98 minutes, rated R.

The new horror movie “Feardotcom” features the bogus story of a Web site that, once viewed, infects you with an Ebola-like virus that leaves you bleeding from your nose and ears, and then dead from your own fears within 48 hours.

It’s not unlike listening to some of the rejected contestants on “American Idol.”

As directed by William Malone, the man who nailed the “condemned” sign to the front of 1999’s “The House on Haunted Hill,” “Feardotcom” is essentially a showcase for the humiliation, mutilation and sadomasochistic torture of women.

That’s nothing new for a horror movie, but in this case, it’s taken to such new lows and extremes, you half expect there to be a reason for it, such as adding in some way to the story or shedding light on the motivation of its characters.

But no such luck.

The film, curiously written by a woman in spite of its rampant misogyny, is somehow worse than its premise suggests. It might be a stretch to call it pornography, but when Malone reaches into his dirty bag of tricks and starts pulling out the leather bondage gear, which his villain, Alistair Pratt (Stephen Rea), uses to tie up and gag several naked, terrified women, you have to wonder how close Malone comes to jumping over that line and turning “Feardotcom” into a snuff film.

Shot with the blue chill of an ice cube, just one of the tricks Malone learned from David Fincher’s work, the film follows the cop (Stephen Dorff) and the coroner (Natascha McElhone) asked to sort all of this Web madness out, a situation that leads to their rushed romance, a plot that stands as the year’s most incoherent, and naturally to all sorts of weirdness bumping in the dark.

In fact, almost everything in “Feardotcom” occurs in the dark, even the scenes set in offices during the daytime, but there’s good reason for that.

Allegedly set in New York City, the film was actually shot in Luxembourg and Montreal. For anyone familiar with Manhattan and its boroughs, it’s an illusion that never works, which Malone himself might have sensed considering his film is shot with all the power of a 15 watt bulb.

Grade: www.F.com

Also in theaters

MICROCOSMOS, directed by Claude Nuridsany and Marie Perennou, 75 minutes, rated G, Sept. 7-8 only, 1 p.m., Railroad Square Cinema, Waterville.

Fifteen years of research, two years of designing special camera technology, three years of filming and six months of editing went in to the production of “Microcosmos,” a beautiful essay on entomology that remains a triumph and a wonder.

The film, from directors (and biologists) Claude Nuridsany and Marie Perennou, won the 1996 grand prize for technical achievement at Cannes, and it’s easy to see why.

With only the briefest narration, “Microcosmos” dramatizes all that we have seen, yet never truly seen. It’s a film that moves you with the beauty of the six-legged, thrills you with the hunt of the carnivorous, and inspires you to look more closely at all the rich life that makes up Mother Earth.

Whether lowering their cameras to the activity found within a French countryside, or lifting their lenses to the lone bee soaring sideways through a summer sky, Nuridsany and Perennou have produced in “Microcosmos” a film that features all of the drama, dark comedy and violence we’ve come to expect from Hollywood, but rarely with a cast composed exclusively of insects.

This isn’t the stuff of “Antz” or “A Bug’s Life,” but a celebration and an examination of what inspired those films. It’s about life and life’s unrelenting struggle. In it, we see parades of furry caterpillars crossing hot, barren terrain, armies of ants tirelessly building colonies eventually ripped apart by hungry birds, grasshoppers leaping to sure and sudden death in sticky spider webs, and the romance of two slugs, whose wet lovemaking, set to an operatic score, is not to be believed.

What’s great about “Microcosmos” is that it’s more than just a study of those lives we tend to trample upon. Its brilliance rests in its ability to showcase insects as lower forms of ourselves. When the seven-dotted ladybugs find one another and mate, when the dung beetle triumphs over physics, or when a colony of ants set off to war, there we are with them, up on the screen, watching a microcosm of our own world play out before our eyes.

Grade: A+

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, occasionally on E! Entertainment’s “E! News Weekend,” Tuesdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5” and Thursdays on “NEWSCENTER at 5:30” on WLBZ-2 and WCSH-6. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.

The Video-DVD Corner

Renting a video or a DVD? NEWS film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores.

Blade II ? B+

High Crimes ? C

Queen of the Damned ? C-

Iris ? B

Joe Somebody ? D

The Rookie ? A-

The Sweetest Thing ? D+

We Were Soldiers ? B+

Birthday Girl ? B

The Business of Strangers ? B

Clockstoppers ? C

In the Bedroom ? A

The New Guy ? D

Showtime ? C+

Deuces Wild ? D-

Lord of the Rings: The

Fellowship of the Ring ? B+

Collateral Damage ? D

Dragonfly ? D

Resident Evil ? C-

Crossroads ? C-

Kung Pow: Enter the Fist: B-

The Time Machine ? D-

Amelie ? A

John Q. ? C-

Pinero ? B

Charlotte Gray ? B+

Hart’s War ? B

The Royal Tenenbaums ?

B+

Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius ? B+

Shallow Hal ? C

A Beautiful Mind ? B

Gosford Park ? B+

I Am Sam ? C

The Majestic ? D-

Max Keeble’s Big Move ? B

Orange County ? C-

The Shipping News ? C

Rollerball ? F

Black Hawk Down ? B

Kate & Leopold ? C+

Monster’s Ball ? A

The Mothman Prophecies ? C

Harry Potter and the

Sorcerer’s Stone ? B 3/4

Sidewalks of New York ? B-

Lantana ? A

Vanilla Sky ? B+

Corky Romano ? D-

From Hell ? C

The Others ? B+

Snow Dogs ? B-

Ocean’s Eleven ? B

Waking Life ? A

Ali ? B+

Not Another Teen Movie ?

C-

Behind Enemy Lines ? C-

No Man’s Land ? A

Black Knight ? F

The Deep End ? A

Domestic Disturbance ? C

The Man Who Wasn’t There ? B+

Mulholland Drive ? A

Spy Game ? C+

Bandits ? D

13 Ghosts ? F

Donnie Darko ? B

K-Pax ? B-

Life as a House ? C

Original Sin ? F

Our Lady of the Assassins ? B+

Riding in Cars with Boys ?

B-

Training Day ? B-

Heist ? B+

Joy Ride ? B+

Zoolander ? C-

A.I. ? B-

The Last Castle ? C-

Sexy Beast ? B+

Jay and Silent Bob Strike

Back ? F

The Musketeer ? D-

The Taste of Others ? A-

Don’t Say a Word ? C-

Hardball ? C+

O ? B+

Hearts in Atlantis ? B

Life Without Dick ? D

Ghost World ? A