The Setup
A serial killer utilizes the modern day phenomenon of viral internet usage to propagate an online website where he kills his victims through gruesome methods for all to see. The more viewers he gets, the quicker the victim dies.
Enter FBI agent Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane). She’s a gung-ho cyber agent, tracking down theft and Trojan viruses. One of her people gives her a post-it note, saying no one was sure what to do with it. When she gets a moment, she enters the ominous title; Killwithme.com. Slowly a stolen kitten dies.
Not long after this, the kitten killer soon stalks human victims, submitting them to various horrible tortures. With each successive murder, the numbers keep going up. Marsh, along with Detective Box (Billy Burke) and Griffin (Colin Hanks) do their digging and start to put together the facts. Soon after, the killer is has Marsh in his sites.
Techno Thriller, Techno Flop
Untraceable wants us to buy into it as a morality tale, a cautionary tale, a statement about the shock value that more and more people seem to crave. All it really does is fall into line behind the ever-growing population of bad horror films. It wants us to believe it is a savvy thriller, but turns out to be nothing more than a cheap rip off of Silence of the Lambs and the Saw series. In fact during the murder scenes, the images are fairly graphic and come off as hypocritical to the whole 'message' that wants to be stated here.
The dialogue is laughable, the villain monologues, and for all of his intellect he sets himself up to fail miserably at the end. In fact, the ending is so laughable, the last images so blatant in trying to send ‘the message’ that the film becomes pretentious on top of its already glaring flaws.
Diane Lane
For as bad as the film is, Lane does what she can with Jennifer Marsh. She gives her all in each and every scene with intensity and honesty. You want to root for Marsh, you really do. Unfortunately, even from the previews we know that she will succumb to the killer at some point, in her car, as he rises from the back seat.
Come on.
Also, her performance is notable given the fact that every possible character cliché is thrown at her including being a law officer, being a single mom who works really strange hours, and losing her husband to ‘the job’. Detective Box seems like a nice enough candidate for a possible romance though, so let’s just throw that in here too.
Conclusion
It’s a shame that a concept like Untraceable degrades quickly into standard rip-off territory. The viral internet concept happens every day, and the desensitizing of the population is totally valid. Also, the filmmakers had a great talent in Lane. Instead, it becomes nothing more than a paint by numbers story that is shoddy even in comparison to some paint by numbers rip-offs. That being said, the film is gorgeous to look at, with brilliant use of colors, shadows, and long shots and angles. If it were a tourist guide for Portland, Oregon it would be a grade A film. Instead, we have a could have, should have, would have situation that culminates in Untraceable being pretty much unwatchable.
All actor/character names referenced via IMDB.
