Untraceable

Subtlety’s 4 sissies!

Here’s a review from the June 2008 issue of BLACK STATIC magazine.

Taking a different viewpoint on the why-are-we-watching theme, Gregory Hoblit’s UNTRACEABLE pits FBI cyber-crime detective Jennifer (Diane Lane, Hollywoodland), against a young ‘genius’ hacker that gets his online jollies offering Internet users a chance to ‘participate’ in snuff-video murders. Uploading a Saw database module to William Malone’s FeardotCom matrix, this is a competent, yet undistinguished, techno-chiller, eagerly focusing on attention to detail (jargon, hoaxes, security, and ideas) rather than just simplemindedly co-opting right-wing moral outrage at what unfettered freedoms and easy access to multimedia consumer-gadgets make permissible.

There are grating lapses in logic and good sense, as the usually cautious heroine wanders stupidly into danger, but palpable horrors abound when a spate of kidnappings leads to deadly game web-casts viewed by millions of Americans. Genre fans might expect superior material from the director of Fallen and Frequency, and Untraceable is not lacking in production values, and casting a mature leading lady amongst its relatively nondescript supporting players (Billy Burke, Colin Hanks, Peter Lewis), means this admittedly ‘sensationalist’ plotline appears well-grounded in a convincing reality, without pointlessly-eccentric characters or incongruous Hollywood glamour to distract us from confronting the cold brutality of the torments and the initial helplessness of even tech-savvy cops to stop the killings.  

It’s not half as entertaining as Jonathan Demme’s great Silence Of The Lambs, or as much twisted fun as Jon Amiel’s Copycat, but, as a meticulously unprejudiced social commentary upon the genuinely worrying rise of online transgressions, it certainly makes overblown fantasy-actioner Die Hard 4.0 look sillier than ever.

Also reviewed on Black Static #5:

Eyes Without A Face
The Sentinel
30 Days Of Night
Blade: The Series
Blood Ties
Needful Things
WAZ
When Evil Calls
Buried Alive
Drainiac
The Graveyard
Mother Of Tears
The Cellar Door
Beowulf
Cloverfield
Five Across The Eyes
Black Water
The Fly