Feardotcom.com: A Complete Plot Rundown

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(Because this movie is weird and Wikipedia has failed us all. This movie feels like Se7en and Ringu had a baby but the baby was stillborn. This is part one of my typically exhaustive summary.)

The movie opens with a man stumbling down the stairs at a subway station in New York City. He somehow found a mostly empty subway station in the Big Apple which is quite a feat. The lights are blinking rapidly as we see the disoriented and desperate look on his face. There is also water dripping everywhere. He looks like he is in a NIN music video. He is clutching a book in his hands. Blood is trickling from his eyes and he wipes it away. He sees another man, almost identical to himself, walking up the steps but the other man quickly hurries away when spotted. When he gets to the platform, he drops his glasses and then he picks them up. As he does, he spots a Doberman happily panting against the wall. His eyes and nose are both bleeding now. He is then spooked by a bone-white ball bouncing onto the tracks. A little girl with equally white, shoulder-length hair picks the ball up and looks directly at the man as if this is normal.

The girl starts to play by throwing the ball onto the tracks and then retrieving it. The man begins breathing hard as he fears that a train will come soon and destroy her. As if on cue, he looks and sees and hears a subway train coming down the tracks. He screams “Nooo!” and climbs down onto the tracks with the train very close now. The girl is gone now and the man runs away from the train instead of running for the platform. The train shows no sign of stopping. The man scrunches against the far wall and looks safe but at the last minute, he pushes off from the wall and into the train's path. His body goes flying as he is hit and he slumps to the ground dead. As he dies, he sees images of the little girl and a mutilated woman on the side of the train as it passes.



We cut to Terry Huston whose alarm goes off, waking her up. She climbs out of bed and goes to put her slippers on but screams in surprise. She pulls a dead mouse out of one of her slippers and then looks over at her cat Benny and thanks them for the present. She jokes that they must be in the same business with no context. The phone rings and she stumbles to her feet and eventually picks up the phone and immediately hangs it up saying that she is “on her way” and that she “can’t keep the roaches waiting” again without context.

We cut back to the subway station where people are all over the place vaguely waving flashlights over the tracks. We see a body bag in the lights from a parked train but it must be a different train because the train that hit the man did not stop. A woman who is presumably an employee of the coroner or medical examiner’s office calls police detective Mike Reilly over to the body. She does not believe that the body was electrocuted by the third rail. Apparently, the subway operator of the other train never explained that he hit somebody. Reilly asks about the bleeding from the man’s eyes but is told that they will have to wait for the autopsy. Apparently, the man we saw earlier on the steps came back down and found the body. The witness’ report confirms that the eyes were bleeding prior to the accident. Reilly picks up the book that the man was still clutching and it is titled “The Secret Soul of the Internet” written by L. Bryant and L. Polidori. The victim has been identified as Polidori (whose first name we never learn).

We cut to a man alone in his apartment. The camera pans across the apartment and we see anatomy drawings and notes. The man accesses a website for “distressed furniture” which turns out to be a very thinly veiled website for viewing live torture videos. We see a rapidly climbing “subscriber” count when it was probably supposed to say “viewers”. The man says “Now all we need is the leading lady.”

We cut to Detective Reilly who is looking at photographs of a blond woman and then some sort of taunting letter from a serial killer named The Doctor. His partner, Detective Sykes, walks into the room where Reilly is brooding and offers him a snack, pushing the bag almost into Reilly’s face. Sykes remarks on the files that Reilly is looking over and says to give it up since they handed that case over to the FBI. Apparently, the case has gone cold and the FBI has failed to catch the killer. Reilly believes that the killer has merely gone dormant.

The two detectives hear a commotion from the bullpen as an unruly young man is hauled toward holding. He is yelling German and bleeding from the eyes. Reilly calls for a translator and for the officers to search the man for identification. They find the man’s ID with his address and Reilly tells somebody to contact the Health Department and ask about the bloody eyes which Reilly has seen twice in one day now.

Reilly, Sykes, and two uniformed officers roll up to the address with their sirens on for some reason. The two detectives start to search the rundown apartment which includes a damaged computer. Reilly heads into the bathroom where the sink is still running. He notices something in the reflection of the filthy bathroom mirror. It is a woman’s dead body submerged in the bathtub. Her eyes were also bleeding. As Reilly reaches down to check the pulse of a woman who is fully submerged and motionless, Terry Huston startles him by telling him not to touch the woman. It might be something like Ebola. Terry is a researcher from the NYC Health Department.



Reilly gets a super vague call to return to the station as there is a problem that he “needs to see”. Reilly tells Sykes to call the coroner about the girl in the bathtub. Terry Huston has found a video camera and asks for a plastic bag. An annoyed Reilly says that the camera is evidence as if that was not the reason why Terry is holding the camera with a pen and asking for a plastic bag.

Reilly and Huston go to the police station where they find the young German man has died in his cell. Before he died, he wrote “murderer” in German and the number “48” on the wall in his own blood. This is a third autopsy that needs to be done. Reilly notes Health Department workers arriving in hazmat suits and Huston says that the two of them (and a lot of cops) are probably already infected. As Reilly berates Huston for letting a deadly disease “run wild”, Huston is handed a serum panel which is all clear. The bleeding eye death is not a virus. Reily and Huston get in a car and drive. Reilly apologizes for freaking out earlier as he is creeped out by germs and pests (as if that makes him special). Huston charmingly says that Reilly sleeps with bugs every night as she brings up dust mites.

We see a man with a camcorder videotaping a blonde woman on the street. He follows her to her job at some sort of box office where he blatantly videotapes her through the glass. When she looks up and notices him, he apologizes and says he could not help himself as she is so beautiful. He says that it might sound like a line but he would love to have her be in his film. Instead of calling the cops, she acts eager and takes his business card, promising to think about showing up at the man’s theater.

Reilly and Huston watch the footage from the camcorder they found on a projector. It is footage of the two German students. We see them frolicking in the city, we see somebody steal the camcorder only for the German male to get it back, we see sexy times, and then we see the two Germans surfing the web together. The footage after that is of the two Germans slowly descending into desperate madness including shots of their eyes and noses bleeding.

The woman from the box office earlier arrives at the creepy guy’s theater. It looks fairly normal on the outside but when she enters it is full of flickering lights in the darkness. Again, it looks like a nu-metal music video. Instead of turning around and exiting, she keeps going and wanders through the backstage area until she is suddenly on stage. The stage lights are in a chase sequence and the creepy guy ambushes her from behind with chloroform.

Reilly and Huston exit the police station to find that Huston has received a parking ticket for parking directly in front of the station’s doors like a maniac. Reilly says that he will have the ticket taken care of.

Huston returns to her office and is summoned into her supervisor’s office. Her supervisor, Mr. Turnbull, is standing in the dark and staring out of the window. For some reason, Huston does not think this is odd and talks to him about the case. She does eventually notice that something is off but Turnbull waves it off claiming to just be tired. Turnbull’s computer is missing from his office and he claims that he sent it in for repair. She jokes that he has been playing on the Internet too much.



We cut to Turnbull in an abandoned industrial plant of some sort and he is just walking around and smoking. He sees the little girl with her ball that Polidori saw and it creeps him out. To be fair, she is a creepy little girl. He hurries to his car. When he goes to light another cigarette, he notices that his nose is bleeding. He looks up to find that the little girl is pressed against the passenger window, startling him into dropping the cigarette. As he tries to put out the lit cigarette at his feet, the girl disappears. Smoke starts to fill up the car which then starts itself. It races through the thankfully empty industrial zone wildly and eventually, he crashes.

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Huston shows up at the morgue where a medical examiner has finished with the bathtub woman’s autopsy. The Germans both died of a stroke brought on by fear. Another body is rolled into the morgue and Huston is shocked to find that it is her boss, Turnbull.

Reilly and Huston question Turnbull’s nonplussed widow. She tells them that Turnbull got sick and started seeing things, specifically a little girl watching him. She thinks that Turnbull worked himself to death even though we saw him crash his car. She does mention that it was odd that he seemed so afraid of a website. Reilly confiscates Turnbull’s computer for evidence.

We cut back to the “furniture” website where we see footage of the woman from the box office strung up and being undressed by the creepy guy. He rants at her until she screams in terror.

Reilly and Huston are trying to find a common thread between the four victims so far but can find nothing in their records. However, they all had bleeding faces and they all had burnt-out computers. They have to get those computers checked out. They take the hard drives to Denise Stone, a “forensic programmer” that Reilly knows.

We watch as Denise checks out the hard drives and is able to piece together a common website that the victims all visited. The address of the site is feardotcom.com (because the studio could not get the rights to fear.com). She visits the website and is confronted by visions of death and torture and a woman taunting her, asking if she “likes to watch”. She tries to shut down the creepy website but it will not turn off. While she is doing that, she fails to notice a huge cockroach crawl out of the hard drives. When she notices it, she crushes the cockroach with a book. When she manages to turn her computer off, it restarts itself and is still on the website. The woman on the site calls out Denise’s name. She types in “How do you know my name?” The woman invites her to “come and find out”. The woman also accuses Denise of wanting to hurt her. Denise is freaking out.



We cut back to the creepy guy who is still torturing the box office lady. She is whimpering as he threatens her with pointy objects. She is already bleeding from her nose.

Denise is walking in the police station stairs but freaks out when she sees the little girl’s ball appear and then rot into a pile of goo full of hissing cockroaches. She flees and bumps into Reilly and Huston. She hands them still pictures from Feardotcom.com and tells them about the website and it being the link between victims. Reilly is confused because he thinks the site belongs to The Doctor as he recognizes the imagery from the serial killer’s letters. Reilly tells Huston about his chase of The Doctor and the websites The Doctor would use to show off his crimes. Denise starts to hurry away but Reilly asks if she can trace the website. She says she can and assures them that she is alright even though she is obviously freaked out.

Reilly and Huston visit a bar trying to track down Bryant, the co-author of Polidori’s book. They find Bryant in the back and, as they approach, a woman crawls out from under his table and walks away. They question Bryant on the book which Huston has tried to read. Bryant did the book for the paycheck and does not believe in anything in it. Bryant goes on to explain (while continuously mispronouncing his co-author’s name) that Polidori was a true believer. He believed that the Internet could accept energy into it including a human soul. He also describes the Internet as a “neural net”.



Reilly shows Huston pictures from The Doctor’s site and explains his method of terrifying his victims for 48 hours online before killing them. Apparently, they knew the whole time that The Doctor’s name was Alistair Pratt, a man kicked out of medical school. He was able to cycle the host of his site to throw off law enforcement and they have never found him. They then determined that all of the victims died exactly 48 hours after viewing feardotcom.com (I’m sorry, it’s so stupid that I have to keep repeating it). They try to call Denise but when she does not answer, they rush to her apartment.

Denise is in a really bad way. She is trembling and soaked with sweat in the middle of her apartment as he sees cockroaches slowly surrounding her. Hundreds of cockroaches suddenly swarm toward her and she desperately tries to get away. After a cockroach crawls out of her mouth, she leaps out of her window and lands on top of a car just as Reilly, Huston, and the cops roll up. Reilly feels guilty for pulling Denise into the case. Huston has figured out that the victims may have died by facing their greatest fears. Reilly thinks that somebody killed Denise because she got to close to solving the case. Huston makes Reilly promise that he will not visit the website.

As soon as Huston falls asleep, Reilly visits the website. The woman on the website challenges Reilly to come find her. If he finds her, he gets her and if he fails, he dies. He gets visions of a cistern somewhere. He walks out into the hallway where he sees the bouncing ball and then he is haunted by the website woman in the elevator. He is bombarded by images of torture and terror.

Huston catches up to Reilly as he is being stretchered to an ambulance (unlike any of the other victims). He recognized the woman from the website as one of The Doctor’s victims and is now on board with her ghost inhabiting the Internet. He shouts at Huston to not go on the website as he is brought on board the ambulance.

Huston goes up to her office and immediately gets on the website. Huston is also challenged by the ghost in the website and bombarded with horrific imagery. She passes out and wakes up later to go to the police station. She works with Sykes (remember Reilly’s partner who disappeared for at least forty minutes?) and goes over the evidence. The victim caught in the website, Janie, was an artist/model. Huston sees Janie’s police file literally start to bleed.

We cut back to the Doctor still torturing the box office lady.

Huston visits the mother of Jeannie who shows Huston pictures of Jeannie’s childhood that match the little girl people have been seeing. Huston shows the mother some pictures of locations printed out from Feardotcom.com and asks if she recognizes any of them. The mother does recognize an industrial plant (unclear if it is the one from earlier) and Huston drives there. Huston encounters a random homeless woman with cataracts who does not factor into the plot but looks creepy. Huston is able to recover the submerged body of Jeannie. She thinks she has “won the game”.

Huston goes to the hospital where Reilly is writhing in his bed. Huston gets a cell phone call from Jeannie’s ghost who tells her the game is still on. She is bombarded once again with imagery including a building that has been shown several times already to both her and Reilly. When she comes back to herself, Reilly appears having mysteriously regained consciousness. In the morgue, the two of them find that Jeannie swallowed a tube of lipstick before she died. Inside is a note promising revenge on The Doctor and an address. They rush to the address and find that it is the apartment we saw way back in paragraph five. They hurriedly search the place and find no sign of The Doctor but they spot a picture of an old power plant that matches the image they both had visions of. Reilly calls Sykes to meet him at the address.

Huston and Reilly infiltrate the power plant where The Doctor still has box office lady captive. Reilly draws his gun and points it at The Doctor, finally having caught the guy he has been obsessed with catching. The Doctor reveals that he has already killed Sykes and pinned him to the wall. That was quick. Reilly shoots The Doctor in the knee but The Doctor shoots Reilly in the chest. Huston stabs The Doctor in the back with a scalpel and releases the box office lady. She stumbles off to the side. The Doctor then takes Huston captive, intending to torture her instead. As The Doctor starts to restrain Huston, Reilly crawls to a keyboard and types in “feardotcom.com” and presses enter. As the website loads, he presses enter again for some reason. Jeannie comes out of the computer and kills The Doctor, getting her revenge. Huston hurries to Reilly but he dies from his gunshot wound.



We cut to Huston in her bed as the phone rings. When she picks it up, she only hears static. She hugs her cat Benny as she stares at the ceiling. We get no resolution on whether box office lady is alright and if Jeannie’s spirit is really at rest. Presumably, the static phone call was Reilly but it is not made clear.