Untraceable

Did anyone involved with Untraceable stop and think just what kind of a movie they were making? I would assume not, because it's playing at a theater near you. Here is a movie that wants to make a statement about how voyeuristic our society has become. With the Internet, web videos, live feeds, and TV programs built around shocking video, you really have to stop and think when the line is going to be drawn. Untraceable asks that question, but doesn't provide an answer. It shakes its finger at us, while at the same time forcing us to be entertained by the very thing its speaking out against. Don't let the slick production values and the talented Diane Lane's name above the title fool you. This is mindless torture horror along the likes of Captivity, only dressed up as an adult thriller.

The hero of the story is Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane), a woman who works for the FBI Cyber Crime Unit. With her partner, Griffin Dowd (Colin Hanks), she scours the Internet for hackers and identity theft criminals, bringing them to justice. A website called "killwithme.com" is brought to her attention early on, and even with the crimes she witnesses everyday, she is still shocked by what she sees. Someone is hosting live murders on the site, where people can log on and watch someone be slowly tortured and murdered through live streaming video. The more people that log on to watch, the faster the victim is killed. The site's first victim is a small kitten, but as word of mouth grows, the killer's methods become more elaborate and the victims become random people plucked off the street. Jennifer is placed at the head of the investigation to find out who is behind the killings, and is partnered up with a Police Detective named Eric Box (Billy Burke). It eventually becomes clear that the killer knows about Jennifer's involvement when streaming video of the outside of her house pops up on the site. With the lives of her young daughter (Perla Haney-Jardine) and mother (Mary Beth Hurt) on the line, the mission to track down the killer becomes personal for Jennifer.

Untraceable has an atmospheric look provided by cinematographer Anastas N. Michos (Perfect Stranger), and director Gregory Hoblit (Fracture) has gathered some good performances, and knows how to keep the action moving at least. The level of care that's been put to making this winds up being one of the most disturbing things about Untraceable. Why was so much effort put into such an undeserving project? This is a movie built entirely around forcing its audience to watch people and small animals tortured in inhumane ways. The screenplay credited to Robert Fyvolent, Mark R. Brinker, and Allison Burnett makes no attempt to hide this fact. It hits the same notes over and over again for the entire 100 minutes or so the film runs. The killer kidnaps someone, Jennifer and the officers gather around in horror as they watch the victim get tortured, the person dies, they investigate, the killer kidnaps someone else...The formula goes on almost uninterrupted. The movie doesn't even give us a mystery to solve, as the identity of the killer is revealed to us by the half hour mark. Actually, we get a brief glimpse of the murderer in a mirror in the film's opening scene as he sets up the kitten's death trap, but the camera doesn't linger on it for very long. So, we're forced to just sit there and watch people get their flesh melted off by acid, or get dangled over spinning blades, while the heroes run around gathering evidence on the person who we already know is the killer. There are no surprises, no revelations, and nothing for us to figure out on our own. The movie is just one gruesome execution after another with little bits of plot information thrown in-between.

The killer in the story is also one of those magical teleporting killers who can always be exactly where he needs to be, know exactly what he needs to know, and show up hidden in the back seats of the cars at just the right moment, even though it should be physically impossible for him to be in such places. I also found myself asking how he can set up so many elaborate murders in his basement in such a short amount of time. Surely building a tank that slowly fills with acid would take some amount of time to throw together, especially with it being tied to the hit counter on his website. This is not a movie that's interested in looking into the mind of its murderer. It just uses him as a prop to stage some grisly torture scenes for our "amusement". The lead character doesn't hold up much better, as the only thing we learn about Jennifer is that she's a widow, and that her husband was on the force when he was alive as well. That's because the movie isn't interested in anyone who enters the movie, nor is it interested in giving them anything interested to do or say. It just wants to shamelessly rip off Silence of the Lambs, and just about every other psycho killer movie in existence, and rub our faces in exploitive, grisly images.

Who is this movie intended for? Budding serial killers themselves, perhaps, who I'm sure will get some wild new ideas by watching this. Untraceable literally has no entertainment value, not even in a shock sense. In order for us to be shocked, there has to be something for us to attach ourselves to. The movie doesn't want to be smart, it doesn't want to thrill us, and it most certainly does not want us to leave the theater with any sort of thought other than the world is a nasty and cruel place. It doesn't offer any sort of message, it just wants to kick us in the dirt for almost two hours, then leave us walking out of it feeling bitter, angry, and exploited. It doesn't even have the brains to be scary. What an ugly, awful, stupid movie this is.

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