While the Internet is unquestionably the most important communications medium ever invented, no one can deny that it has a decidedly dark underbelly. There’s no telling what kinds of websites the average person will come across while just innocently surfing around, and no telling what kinds of sites exist to address popular demand.

If the 2008 film Untraceable is to be believed, a website set up to stream slow, torturous murders would receive tens of thousands of hits and be a tremendous success, even if the visitors know that they are helping kill the victim faster simply by being on the site. At first, I thought this sounded a little extreme, but then I remembered how many people watched the Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, and Saddam Hussein execution videos and concluded that the plot of Untraceable is entirely plausible.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Jennifer Marsh (played by Diane Lane) and Griffin Dowd (Colin Hanks) are FBI agents who work the night shift monitoring the Internet for criminal activity. They mostly try to track down pedophiles and scam artists, but occasionally bigger cases come across their desk — which is precisely what happens when Marsh stumbles across a site called KillWithMe.com.

The site shows a kitten being killed, and at first Marsh and Dowd think the setup might be a hoax. But after the kitten’s owner says the animal was stolen right out of his yard in broad daylight, the FBI agents start to look at the site a bit more closely. Unfortunately, they can’t get a read on who’s running the site since the whole thing is organized in a way that makes the guy’s identity and location untraceable.

From the kitten, the unknown subject (unsub) moves on to killing people. The first victim is a helicopter pilot who was injected with an anticoagulant that essentially allowed him to bleed to death. Two more victims follow, with each person’s death hastened by the number of visitors who come to the website to watch the proceedings.

The rest of the film then deals with the FBI’s attempts to track down the killer by finding an obscure connection between the victims. Of course, a couple of the agents find themselves in imminent danger before all is said and done, but they eventually get their guy in the end.

My Reaction: I thought Untraceable was a decent, but not great, thriller. As I said above, the plot was believable, and the action moved along at a nice, quick pace that left me little time to get bored with what was going on. However, the film had several flaws that prevented it from being a wholly satisfactory viewing experience.

The most glaring of these was the ending, which I felt was extremely anticlimactic. After all that Marsh has gone through in order to capture the killer, we end with her shooting the guy and the picture fading to black? That was it? I was expecting at least one wrap-up scene after that, but obviously didn’t get it. I guess you could argue that there was nothing left to show since the killer was dead, but still… the ending was far too abrupt for my tastes.

The killer’s motive was interesting and original. His father’s suicide was shown live, so he thought he’d get his revenge by doing the same thing to those who were involved in his father’s death. I liked that angle, but couldn’t help wondering if the guy would simply stop killing once he got to everyone who had a part in that death. As such, the whole situation would feel a lot less urgent — which I suppose is why he switched to FBI agents midway through his agenda.

Overall, Untraceable does a passable job of giving viewers an engaging story for an hour and a half. There are some problems along the way, but on the whole, the film is worth watching. I give it 6.0 stars out of 10.