User blog:Users Afraid/PE Proposal: Dr. Alistair Pratt from FearDotCom

You know i'm sleepy so i will be concise. This is a proposal for The Doctor from the 2002 'horror' movie FearDotCom (yes, i'm in the list btw)

What's the Work?
FearDotCom is an horror film about a cursed website that kills everyone who enters it. The website hosts a misterious woman who seems to know the identity of everyone who enters the website and challenges them to a game that consist in finding her within 48 hours, if they lose they die (some brain damage and crap, the victims see visions of their biggest fears before dying and sometimes those fears are the direct cause of their deaths). These woman is actually the ghost of Jeannine Richardson, a model that looks vengeance against his killer, guess who?

Who is he/What has he done?
Pratt is not the central antagonist of the film, but it is the main one. An ex-doctor thrown out of the medical school, Alistair turned himself in a vicious serial killer with twisted ways of viewing life. His first victim of all was Jeannine Richardson, therefore he is the one responsible for the events of the film.

''Yeah, so what? that's not enough for being pe'' I know. Normally i don't think serial killers should be PE because the heinous standards in this kind of films is high. We're to fond of watching this guys killing that they don't give effect on us anymore, and turn it into standard villainy (Again, in this kind of films). That's why i judge them basing in their motivations and forms of killing, and this guy, oh man...

Character Traits
Let's talk about some modus operandi. Alistair is some kind of a nihilist being that thinks death is the absolute thing. Therefore, he uses his scientifc knowledge to lure and kidnap womens, strip them off and torturing them with surgical methods (which varies on things like electrocution, mutilations in the face, eyes and nose, acupuncture with actual nails, opening the skulls and exposing the brains, vivisections to show the ribcage while the victims are conscious and etc), some of them not so surgical (like hung the nude victims and put them barbed wire) but the twisted thing is that he does this until the victims ask him to be killed. By doing this Pratt tests how much his victims hold on to life until they finally beg for death, a form of testing their will as well as breaking it. The torture can go on for daaays. Jeannine was tortured 48 hours until she finally asked for death, reason why she gives this time to the victims who enters the website. Choosing death is not a great option either, because Pratt applies a vivicsection and pulls out every organ to put them in plastic bags and put them inside the body again, all of this while the victim is fully conscious.

But how does the website relates to all of this? apparently, Pratt runs various websites where he streams live tortures of his victims, all of them womens. He is very popular among the web and has a great amount of followers. Pratt thinks they are his 'students' and that they are there to 'learn', but he is aware that his public is full of morbid perverts, reason why he gives 'leasons' of how wasting life in electronic impulses is a perversion, to teach them that death is a normal component of the internet. After every death he changes the website, being impossible to trace.

Mitigating Factors
I don't know if being 'nihilistic' is some kind of a mitigating factor thanks to the villain having some kind of moral agency with viewing himself as evil but i think Alistair doesn't count as such. He has weird beliefs but is nowhere close to being delusional or not being aware of what he is doing. Alistair is very inteligent and charming, traits that helped him with getting away with his killings for nine months, as well as avoiding justice. You don't do that by just being a crazy madman who murders everyone because thinks life sucks. Plus, i don't know how much Pratt actually believes in his own crap and doesn't use it as an excuse to kill people. He values his own life as a form that he thinks that he should be alive to keep bringing death. Not forgetting that he is an egomaniac that is always asking for attention, not only he broadcasts a website where he streams tortures (in the movie he seems more like a normal youtuber wanting views, being midly excited everytime the suscriber counter rises and how much people is watching him) but he also sends 'love' letters to the detective that is investigating him as a way to mock him and the police.

Heinous Standards
The only villains in the film are him and Jeaninne. Jeaninne kills her victims in some kind of psychological torture, by showing them their fears until their brains explodes or something (the film really doesn't explain it well more than 'they died from fear'), but sometimes she causes his deaths in a Final Destination fashion by manipulating the environment and using it to kill her victims, again, using their fears as a basis. This may sound kinda sadistic but she really doesn't even compare to Alistair. Jeannine is kinda tragic as her being both physical and psychologically tortured by Pratt in two days, she is not doing this out of plain evilness but she turned himself in some kind of angry spirit with everyone in the web because they watched her dying. When Mike (the protagonist) helps Jeaninne in getting her vengeance with Pratt, the killings stop and she rests in peace. Not forgetting that her ways of killing are not even close to the level of gruesomeness and painfulness like Pratt's. Also, Alistair sets the standards in the film.

Screen Time
Not all, but most of his actions are on-screen. The film since it begins shows various scenes of him torturing a victim with various methods until Mike finds and stops him, and that is AT THE END of the movie. Also various photos of his previous victims are shown.

Conclusion
I'm surprissed no one has proposed him yet, maybe the film unpopularity shrouded the appearence of this baddie who was rather memorable and entertaining to watch. Yes, i think he counts, but you decide after all.