the Mind’s Chew Toy

Synopsis:

Within the FBI, there exists a division dedicated to investigating and prosecuting criminals on the internet. Welcome to the front lines of the war on cybercrime, where Special Agent Jennifer Marsh (Lane) has seen it all–until now. A tech-savvy internet predator is displaying his graphic murders on his own website–and the fate of each of his tormented captives is left in the hands on the public: the more hits his site gets, the faster his victims die. When this game of cat and mouse becomes personal, Marsh and her team must race against the clock to track down this technical mastermind who is virtually untraceable.

Our Thoughts:

We hadn’t heard much about this film before seeing a preview lately…and suddenly we want to see this one. While the web site plot has been done before (FearDotCom (2002), The Condemned (2007)), Untraceable ups the ante by having the website visitors become active participants in the torture.

As the movie progresses, and more and more people hear about this new torture website, the website’s hits go through the roof, and the victims begin dying faster and faster. Despite warnings from the FBI that the visitors are actively helping to kill the victim - and could be charged as an accessory to murder, the poularity of the site keeps increasing.

Just look at how TV shows like “World’s Worst…” have stayed popular - and just think of how much more popular shows like “Fear Factor” and “Cops” would be if they included death. Even the fictional shows, like “CSI”, “Law & Order” and “Women’s Murder Club” know the routine - focus on death and the ratings increase People are fascinated with death, and that won’t change any time soon - and with the semi-passive assistance of logging into a website, they get to experience death secondhand - in fact they help bring it about. If this were real, the fear of “death in minutes” expressed in the preview actually may be a low expectation.

With an engaging plot that hits home in today’s society, and the addition of Diane Lane in the lead role, Untraceable sounds like it is going to be chillingly good. The only thing that gives us pause is the inclusion of Tom Hanks’ son, Colin Hanks. Jack Black was the only thing that saved Hanks’ last film, Orange County, and here he just seems to be a distraction the film doesn’t need.

Let’s just hope that Hanks isn’t enough of a distraction (or has greatly improved his acting skills - hah) to bring the whole film down with him. Since we’re already planning on spending our January movie allowance on Cloverfield (2008), guess we’ll have to wait for the DVD to find out.