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Review

A series of resplendent visuals aren't quite enough to compensate for a nonsensical story line in this mixed bag of a horror tale. Dorff is a detective investigating the odd, seemingly unconnected deaths of people who have the same symptoms: bleeding from the nose and eyes, and a look of abject terror frozen on their faces. He and health inspector McElhone soon discover these folks had all logged onto a snuff website before they died. The story (such as it is) is derivative of the Japanese horror films The Ring and Pulse, the general look of the film is pure Seven (citywide brownout), and specific visual ideas are stolen from a variety of U.S. and European horrors (Bava's Kill Baby Kill, Jacob's Ladder, Argento's Inferno, to name but three). The film's a mess, but it's oddly compelling and always visually interesting (and at times truly striking); individual scenes, even certain shots, can be at once disturbing, moronic, gorgeous and incongruous. The acting runs the gamut from acceptable to terrible, but Combs is on hand as a hard-boiled cop for some extra cult-film-fan points.

 -- Dean C. Galanis