DVD Release Date:  May 13, 2008
Theatrical Release Date: Jan. 25, 2007
Rating: R (for grisly violence and torture, and some language)
Genre: Suspense
Run Time: 101 min.
Director: Gregory Hoblit
Actors: Diane Lane, Billy Burke, Colin Hanks, Joseph Cross, Mary Beth Hurt, Peter Lewis

Computers, cell phones, e-mail—how many thrillers have been bogged down by scenes of characters sitting in front of monitors, tapping into e-mail accounts, breaking codes, and altering programs? The genre has not clicked with audiences. Remember Perfect Stranger, one of last year’s worst films? If not, I don’t blame you. It bombed. We’re all trying to forget it.

Untraceable is one of the first technology thrillers to generate actual thrills. Too bad that the film is representative of a terrible cultural trend—the mystery built around videotaped torture. While not falling into the “torture porn” genre of such films as Saw, Untraceable is an ugly film that shows vile forms of human suffering. Yet its horrific killings are, sadly, not much more graphic than an average episode of Criminal Minds or CSI—two of the top-rated series on TV. It seems the country has become hardened to the increasingly inventive ways fictional killers dispatch their victims. So it stands to reason that a feature film, for which viewers have to buy a ticket, would supply a grislier dose of sadism.

Diane Lane is FBI Agent Jennifer Marsh, a widow who works the cyber beat with her partner, Griffin (Colin Hanks). They visit suspect Web sites, trace the sites to find out where they originate, and, when things get hot enough, send in the cops to apprehend the offender.

The two of them stumble onto a new site, killwithme.com, and track the site’s morbid images. First is a dead kitten, killed by the person (Joseph Cross) who runs the site. But soon it’s human beings, tortured in ways that increase the victims’ pain and suffering as more viewers log on to see what’s unfolding.

The site becomes an Internet sensation, but the FBI team proves incapable of tracing its source. The site’s IP address keeps changing, and the FBI has no jurisdiction over the matter, Marsh explains to her superior, throwing in terms like “exploited server” and “botnet.” Who knows if any of this makes sense in the world of IT. Lane talks fast and pushes past the jargon, allowing us to get back to the bleeding bodies boiling in hydrochloric acid (yes, we actually see such a thing).

There’s only one place for the film to go—toward a direct confrontation between the villain and Marsh. That’s the path it takes, as the killer exploits the people Marsh most cares about to slowly close in on Marshall herself.