This short film review is about ‘Untraceable’ crime/thriller, directed by Gregory Hoblit and produced by Tom Rosenberg. Untraceable stars Diane Lane, who plays the main character, agent Jenifer Marsh, Billy Burke who plays detective Eric Box, Colin Hanks who plays agent Griffin Dowd and Joseph Cross who plays the evil sick serial killer behind the webcam, Owen Reilly. It’s a modern day film set in Manhattan.

Untraceable Poster

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?


Kill with me Untraceable

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.