Episode 279 - FearDotCom
Welcome back to Not A Bomb! —the podcast where we resurrect cinema’s most infamous box office disasters and ask the burning question: was it really that bad? We’re celebrating five years of cinematic redemption, and our Spooktacular series continues with a deep dive into one of the internet’s earliest horror nightmares.
This week, Troy and Brad boot up their dial-up modems and log into Feardotcom, the 2002 techno-horror thriller that tried to make the web scary before social media did. Feardotcom spins a tale of cursed clicks, haunted bandwidth, and a website that kills its visitors within 48 hours. That’s right—before The Ring made VHS tapes deadly, Feardotcom asked what happens when your browser history becomes your obituary. Troy and Brad explore the film’s troubled production, its critical drubbing, and why it earned the dreaded “F” CinemaScore.
But is there something worth salvaging in this digital disaster? Could Feardotcom be a misunderstood relic of early internet anxiety? Or is it just a glitch in the horror matrix?
Feardotcom is directed by William Malone and stars Stephen Dorff, Natascha McElhone, Stephen Rea, Udo Kier, and Amelia Curtis.
To celebrate the last 25 years of film, the Not A Bomb podcast is compiling a Top 25 list from the Not A Bomb community. If you would like to submit your own list, please use this form to enter your 25 choices. For a film to be eligible, it must have been released between January 1, 2000, and December 31, 2025. Those are the only rules. Thank you for being a part of the community! Stay tuned for a special episode revealing the results in December. Head over to Not A Bomb 25 in 25 to fill out the form!
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