Director Gregory Hoblit’s Untraceable delivers its message of internet desensitization a bit heavy-handedly, but as a thriller, it’s one hell of a tense ride!
FBI agent Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane) and her partner Griffin Down (Colin Hanks) have teamed with detective Eric Box (Billy Burke) of the Portland police department to track down a serial killer, one who live-streams his murders over the internet. In fact, the more visitors the killer’s website (killwithme.com) receives, the faster his victims perish, often in the most brutal ways imaginable.
An expert in cybercrime, Marsh does what she can to pinpoint the killer’s whereabouts, only to be frustrated at every turn. And now that the investigators have put themselves in this psychopath’s crosshairs, it may only be a matter of time before one of them becomes his next victim.
Diane Lane is superb as Agent Marsh, a dedicated investigator juggling her professional responsibilities with being a single mom (her daughter Annie is played by Perla Haney-Jardine), while Hanks, Burke, and Mary Beth Hurt (as Marsh’s mother, Stella) are solid is support.
It’s the story of an internet killer, though, and the manner in which his victims are slaughtered, where Untraceable truly distinguishes itself. Using everything from heat lamps to sulfuric acid, the killer leaves it up to his audience as to how quickly his “subjects” die. The more viral the video goes, the faster the death. And these killings are vicious! The subjects do not die quickly; even late in the film, when the viewership numbers jump exponentially by the second, these poor souls suffer for what seems like an eternity, making each fresh kill tougher to watch than the last.
Director Hoblit and screenwriters Robert Fyvolent, Mark Brinker, and Allison Burnett also throw us for a loop at one point. The killer’s identity remains a well-kept secret until just before the movie’s halfway mark, at which point we the audience finally see his face. Yet his motives, his exact whereabouts, even his identity remain a mystery. It is as if the filmmakers were toying with us in much the same way the killer toys with the police and the FBI. In most thrillers, an early glimpse of the villain functions as an “a-ha” moment, an exposé that answers a few questions we might have had up to that point. In Untraceable, we see his face. That’s all we get, and just like before this slight reveal, we’re relying on Agent Marsh to fill in the rest of the blanks.
As mentioned, Untraceable is not subtle about what it’s trying to teach us. The internet has made the world a much smaller place, granting anyone and everyone access to grisly real-life images and shocking news videos from around the world. With mayhem and murder a simple Google search away, we have become passive observers, taking in real-life violence as if it were nothing more than a TV show, with no concern whatsoever for the people whose lives have been forever changed.
Yet while Untraceable may deliver its message with all the delicacy of a sledgehammer, this does not detract at all from the film’s overall effectiveness. A taut police procedural and a first-class thriller, Untraceable will have you nervously biting your nails from start to finish.
Rating: 8.5 out of 10
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