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What's Diane Lane doing in a movie like this? Not that she isn't believable as an FBI agent, but "Untraceable" takes what was a promising concept of a serial killer killing subjects on the internet and inviting us to watch and turns it into a below average thriller with capable actors playing characters who do the dumbest things. You'd figure after all these years, that filmmakers would not have us believe that people would do things that they shouldn't be doing for the sake of their own survival. It's especially insulting when you involve great actors like Diane Lane. Diane plays Agent Jennifer Marsh, an FBI agent who works on internet crimes like identity theft and pirates downloading stuff illegally. She is also a single mother whose husband was killed in the line of duty, and she and her daughter live with her mother Stella (Mary Beth Hurt, and for once she is not in a movie written and/or directed by her husband, Paul Schrader). One night while at work, she and her partner Griffin (Colin Hanks) come across a website called KillMeNow.com where they are witness to a live feed of someone killing off a cat. Her superior of course blows this off as just another sick schmuck who is just fooling around, but we all know that this dead cat is just the beginning. There try shutting down the site, and they try to trace the source of where the site is originating, but they are dumbfounded in their search. As the days go by, the one running the site ends up broadcasting over the internet the slow and agonizing deaths of random people he has kidnapped. He ends up devising elaborates way to kill them off like letting one unlucky soul gets his skin melt away with sulfuric acid, or have another burned like a hideously overdone steak with over a dozen heat lamps. The catch is that the speed of death is increased by the number of people who visit the site. As the murders go on, the site inexplicably gains more popularity, and the murders become more gruesome and fast. But soon, Jennifer finds that this twisted mind is starting to look into her life more closely than she would like. You should have a pretty good idea of what happens from there. The murders are pretty gruesome, and they play like the rejected ideas from the "Saw" movies. There will be plenty of good stuff for the Fangoria crowd to take in, especially in the aftermath of the killings. Instead of having someone like Jigsaw giving his victims the option of living or dying, this killer here is not interested in giving any options. The only option the victim has is how quickly or slowly they will die, but that's not up to him at all. The victim's fate is up to us, as the killer makes it his task to implicate us for watching these heinous acts as if they are no different from stuff we see on the evening news. This brings me to my first real issue with the movie. As the murders go on, the site raises in popularity from a million viewers to 2 million, then to 6 million, and then 13 million by the movie's end. Now I don't doubt that there are that many who would visit a site like that, but you can't convince me that there are that many people who would visit it, especially when the FBI makes it clear to the public that it is in their best interest to NOT visit the website. I should also mention that the killer has restricted the access of this websites to those in America. Had he included countries like Asia or Japan, which make some of the best and sickest horror movies ever, then those numbers might have made more sense. And of course, the characters in the movie do the stupidest things. There is a moment where Diane Lane's character realizes that the killer has hacked into her computer system and controls all her electronic devices. But even after getting her mother and daughter out of town, and her holing up in a motel in the middle of nowhere, she still uses her cell phone to call her daughter! At that point, I would have just thrown my cell phone out the window or run my car right over it. What the hell was she thinking? Then there's a part in the last half (beware of possible spoilers here) where Diane's character is driving in her car, and it shuts down on her along with her cell phone. Like I said, the killer has control over her accessories, so the fact that she is still driving her car has me rolling my eyes. But here's the kicker; she manages to escape her car and call for help, but a moment later, the headlights of her car come up and it appears to work again. So what does she do? She goes back to the car and sits in it to wait for help! It's bad enough that the filmmakers do that with this character, but you have Diane Lane degrading her intelligence by playing this character, and that just adds insult to injury. "Untraceable" was directed by Gregory Hoblit, and he has directed some good movies like "Primal Fear" and "Frequency." But here, he gives us nothing more than an average thriller that feels more like an average TV movie. email this review to a friend
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