Plot

The film begins where agent Jenifer finds a website which broadcasts the live murder of a cat. At first nothing is thought of it, until later the website broadcasts its first human victim, and the more viewers the website has, the faster the victims die! The FBI agents can’t trace the website broadcasting the murders because of the constant changing of I.P addresses and mirrors, hence the film being called Untraceable. All the tortures are streamed live from http://www.killwithme.com/.

It’s then up to the FBI to try and track down the killer and solve the mystery. Will they be successful?

Directors Job

The story line of Untraceable is really good and very well planned out. It is clever how all of the victims are connected somehow and how they all relate to the serial killer. I won’t spoil this for you, you will have to go and watch the movie, and you will be surprised.

It was slow going and was kind of like a copy cat Saw movie, trying it at a different angle. It’s a nice original idea but reminded me too much of Saw and Se7en put together.

Untraceable does not have any nudity, no action, no scary moments, no sex, and no love. In fact, If you don’t like slow movies, i wouldn’t suggest seeing this because you won’t like it. If you like the original ideas the movie sets, then by all means see it. The death scenes are graphic, but not graphic enough to my liking, there are some moments where you will cringe, but i’ve seen rated 15 movies worst than this.

I thought the director did an ok’ish job, it could have been far better.

Acting

Diane Lane is brilliant as always and did nothing wrong here and Burke and Hanks are good supporting cast. The police characters do a good job and their job and make it look realistiv, even the killer himself doesn’t do a bad job and represents an internet geek. Overall i think the acting is fine.

Sound Effects and Music

To be honest, i really didn’t notice any music or soundtrack playing apart from the odd ‘upsetting’ tune that played to try and make you cry or feel sorry for the victims. The sound effects were good and did what they were meant to do.

Overall – 7/10

I was looking forwards to this movie but was let down by not having enough action in it. It’s not hardcore enough for the target audience and doesn’t compete with it’s meant to be rivals, ‘Saw’ and ‘Hostel’.

I think the rating of certificate 18 is a little too harsh because there isn’t much gore or gruesome bits that happen, and of the ones that are, you generally don’t see that much.

What happens in this movie could actually happen in real life and it scares me thinking about this, and the worst part about it is that people would actually log onto the website to see this sort of thing happen.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen an idea like this in a movie before, i would recommend seeing it, otherwise it’s a slow let down. I give it 7/10 for it’s original idea.

Plot

At the beginning of the film the couple (Holly and Gerry) are having a typical arguement, which viewers can most likely relate to, which adds a sense of humour to the start of the film. The couple kiss an make up and then the film skips to a memorial service of Gerrys life, where we discover that Gerry has died. Gerry died from a brain tumor and Holly is absolutely heart broken and doesn’t know what to do with her life. The story then unfolds where Holly recieves 10 messages from her late husband to help her move on with her life (dont worry this is not creepy, he prepared them before he died!)

One of the letters tell Holly to go on holiday to Ireland where they first met.
Eventually Holly goes to meet Gerrys parents and she unfolds the story of her life with Gerry. Holly then bumps into one of Gerrys friend who is a singer in a local pub.

Can Holly move on in her life? Find out when you watch the movie.

Directors Job

The directing of the film is very good for the genre. Throughout the film Holly has flash backs of her times with Gerry which makes it really upsetting for the audience. There are also times where Holly imagines Gerry being around which makes the film a typical tear jerker. I’ve never seen my girlfriend cry so much in any other film, but at the same time laughed and really enjoyed the movie. The director did a splendid job.

Acting

I thought the acting in this film was good by Hilary Swank but terrible by Gerard Butler. Why was Gerard bad acting? Because he tried to put on an Irish accent and failed miserably. Other than that, acting is pretty solid.

Sound Effects and Music

The music in the film is excellent, it is very well chosen to suit the movie and is played at the exact moments that you feel like bursting into tears, which adds to the emotion in the film.

Overall

I give this film an overall rating of 8/10. The acting let parts of the film down by Gerard, but the story and direction made up for this. If you have a soft heart and cry easily, you WILL cry while watching this movie. I would reccommend this to anyone who wants to see a romantic chick flick. One of the better romantic films i’ve seen so far this year.

The movie starts off at a leaving party for the main character Rob (Michael Stahl-David) when a loud crashing noise is heard from outside, it sounds like an earthquake so everyone rushes to the roof to take a closer look. Then everyone rushed outside and the city started to be evacuated, people made their way to the bridge to leave the city and it is then shown what made the noise. The few main characters decide to stay in the city and look for someone, will they make it out alive? The rest of the movie resolves around hearing people scream, run and shoot.

The movie is shot from the perspective of a video camera of which one of the characters are recording all throughout the movie. This may be bad for people who suffer from motion sickness, as in parts the camera is all over the place and you cannot see what is happening. At times watching the movie hurt my eyes because of the camera shaking so much. Sometimes I had to look away and something that wasnt moving to re-focus and then carry on watching the movie.

The acting of the movie was ok, it wasn’t the best, it wouldn’t make sense to use big name actors in this film, so i’m glad they kept to the low profile ones. There is no music score in Cloverfield apart from the credits at the end. I didn’t mind this because the movie was action packed and wouldn’t make sense if music was applied to it.

The directing of the movie is very good, as it is not revealed at first what it is that caused the loud banging and collapsing of buildings at the beginning. This keeps the viewers tense and gripped to the movie as they wait to see what it is.

Overall I would give the movie 7 out of 10, I found the marketing aspect better than the actual movie itself. The story line and the special effects in the movie were good and also they way in which you feel you are there in the movie; however I did not like the idea of the camera being the view of a video recorder, as I felt I was missing out on seeing what was happening outside the view of the camera. If you liked Blair Witch Project, you may well like Cloverfield, if you watched Blair Witched Project and had to turn it off because of the shaky camera, I would reccomend this movie.

7/10.