The Daily Dig: .Com for Murder (2001)

This early 2000s flick about how tech can be used to infiltrate privacy and personal safety doesn’t seem far-fetched anymore.

A disabled woman finds trouble in an internet chat room and must use her high-tech house in hopes of not becoming the next victim. Let’s dig into 2001’s .COM FOR MURDER, directed by Nico Mastorakis!

As I See It

The first we see of someone playing around in cyberspace is focused on internet porn, as it should be compared to user trends. Porn was the steroid that made the internet an everyday necessity.

In this film, technology is used to make a disability easier to live with. Inevitably, it ends up being used as a dating tool, connecting Sondra (Kinski) to a horny chat room.

I’ve seen historical criticism of this film as unrealistically depicting computer technology. However, I find the threat imposed by the cyber killer to be universally true: catfishing, live streaming, and phishing. They even have Huey Lewis giving a glimpse inside the Dark Web by stating its existence. Not a single thing stated as being in this “underbelly’ was incorrect.

Instead of using a line from the film as a killer tagline: “Never trust a man without a face,” they decided to go the tired route that so many have done before and rip off the original tag for Alien (“In space, no one can hear you scream”), simply adding “cyber” to it.

They may add some appealing graphics to cover up the monotony of real computer programming and coding, but that’s Hollywood, baby.

Even Hackers, the pinnacle of depicting enumeration in film, uses the same technique. No one wants to see realistic coding for an hour and a half.

Famous Faces

Natassha Kinski (Sondra) — the daughter of frequent Werner Herzog and Roman Polanski collaborator Klaus Kinski — starred alongside Charlie Sheen in the nineties action film Terminal Velocity.

Nicolette Sheridan (Misty), the model turned actor, entered water cooler pop culture as Edie Britt in the hit TV series Desperate Housewives, which I might not be going out on a limb to say may not align with much of our audience’s viewing taste.

Roger Daltrey (Ben) is the pinball wizard himself and the legendary singer of The Who.

Huey Lewis (Agent Matheson) is another musical legend, though from a different era than Daltrey. He lent a few songs from his catalog to the perfect script, Back to the Future, and even had a small part in the film as the judge of the band auditions. You may also have seen him in the hot new documentary on Netflix about the making of the collaborative song “We Are the World” called The Greatest Night in Pop.

Additionally, on a more personal level, I’ve had the pleasure of being on the local crew for Lewis’ annual rounds at a venue I worked at for over a decade about a dozen times, and it was always a great show.

Of Gratuitous Nature

We waste no time jumping into the Psycho scene. A woman is killed while showering, and we see it all not just in the POV of the killer but through negative and even pseudo-infrared colorways, an artistic choice meant to depict altered realities rather than anything of technological substance.

Perhaps a sacrilegious homage could be pointed out. Naming the responsive computer system “Hal”, an obvious ode to Kubrick’s 2001 may make some retch.

Heartthrob

It’s fun to watch what futurists got right and wrong in film. I’m a big fan of Robert Heinlein, and for everything he “predicted,” there were ten things he got completely wrong. That does nothing to lessen the worlds he built in print form, and we probably shouldn’t hold the film to a higher standard, though it’s hard not to laugh at old (twenty years ago is old!?) depictions of tech.

Ripe for a Remake

Taking some of the elements that are touched on and updating them to our current resources and capabilities may not be very original, but if you can touch on the next wave of tech and somehow seem a prophet with your predictions, maybe you can find a story worthy of telling.

Spawns

No progeny to report.

Where to Watch

Arrow Video released a Blu-Ray of .com for Murder that is not cheap. You can also stream it on their proprietary service or rent it on Amazon, Google Play, YouTube, or Apple TV.