“Feardotcom” should be the motto of 2020. I’m not saying we live in the most horrific year ever, but life isn’t exactly the Great Gatsby hedonistic jam sesh we all thought it would be. Although, the hedonism is there, but for the same reason wine was drank more than water in the Middle Ages. Because we’re all going to fucking die. Nevertheless, let’s watch a scary movie together. Or 31.

Any film that centers around changing technology is either quaint or creepy in hindsight:

The Net – a women gets her identity erased and has to start over. Sounds absolutely lovely! No more student loans!

You’ve Got Mail – innocent flirtation turns into catfishing expedition that cost a woman her business and trampled on the memories of her dead mother. Terrifying!

This movie, however is just awful, and not in the “horror-movies-so-cheesy-vibe,” I mean it had all the right ideas and the wrong execution. The first scene is a middle aged man getting creamed by a subway car after following a little girl with a Sia wig down a tunnel. He’s clutching a book called The Secret Soul of the Internet. That joke makes itself.

After the first death is ruled an accident/suicide (the coroner isn’t very good at her job), a grizzled (they are always grizzled) detective and an extremely attractive Department of Health employee work together when two German exchange students die of a mysterious illness. Now the hellscape that seems to occupy lower Manhattan as a setting for this film, also seems to lead us to a conclusion that punk artists can live in 1000 square foot apartments with amazing internet connection.

Not knowing anything about the plot of the move beyond the title, I figured this would mean that a computer virus somehow manifests itself into a real life virus and is killing the victims. That’s a cool premise, let’s see how it plays out.

Well, it doesn’t. That’s not the case at all. The kids apparently just went insane and then died, all while filming their last 48 hours on earth. The god-awful detective Reilly (played by vape pen slinger, Stephen Dorff), contaminates every crime scene. He then draws a conclusion that this is similar(?) to a serial killer case he had been working on that had been “given to the feds.” I don’t know who the mysterious “feds” are in this universe, but they seem to be a secondary villain because they never show up and also don’t seem to care about young white girls being mutilated on live web cams. Which is something we find out in lots of jolty camera movements and strobe lights.

The actual villain is Stephen Rea and his American accent. When he is first introduced, he’s stalking a young woman with his camcorder. The woman is, as every woman in 2002 is, flattered and interested in the “leading lady job” he has to offer. We learn he has a very elaborate and interactive website, designed in entice people in and play on their darkest fears/fantasies, which inevitably leads to their death.

They never go into how the website is shared, or who the other victims might be. It turns out the first guy who died on the subway believed the internet could manifest energies and keep people alive within the wires after, even after they die. That doesn’t explain why Stephen Rea (a doctor), wants to torture women on a web cam. He admits freely that he’s a sociopath and his favorite quote is one often mis-attributed to Stalin: “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” But that doesn’t make any sense either, because he’s only killed 4 people and the marketing pattern on his website is very limited to computer experts (NERDS).

So amateur Stalin, Detective Vape Pen, and DOH lady finally meet up in what might be the worst ending to a horror movie I’ve ever seen. There’s no resolution, no last minute explanation, no continuation of the Sia girl, not even a reason why when Reilly called for “back up,” only one dude showed up. This movie just made me angry, not scared. Be better at twists! The Ring (which I haven’t seen), came out 2 months later and basically got more money with even older technology. Stick with BetaMax next time, screenwriter. Or understand internet better.