Untraceable
Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane) is a widowed single parent living in a suburban Portland home with her daughter Annie Haskins (Perla Haney-Jardine). By night, she works in the FBI's cybercrime division with Griffin Dowd (Colin Hanks), fighting identity theft and similar crimes. One night, an anonymous tip leads them to a website called killwithme.com. The site features a streaming video of a kitten being tortured and killed.
After the kitten's death, KillWithMe's webmaster (Joseph Cross) 'graduates' to human victims and makes their deaths correlate directly with the number of hits the site receives. At a press conference, the public is urged to avoid killwithme but, as Marsh feared, this only increases the site's popularity. The videos are recorded in the killer's basement and his various victims include a helicopter pilot (who is bled to death by injections of anticoagulant), a newscaster (burnt by heat lamps) and Dowd (killed by slowly increasing the concentration of sulfuric acid solution in which he is submerged).
At first it seems the victims were randomly chosen, but this is not the case. The first two victims were chosen because they were part of filming or presenting the suicide of a junior college teacher. The teacher's unstable, techno-prodigy son, Owen Reilly, broke down and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. When released, he decided to prove a point (that the public is insatiable for the suffering of others), as well as wreak vengeance on those he felt had exploited his father's tragedy. Dowd was killed because he came close to the truth of who the murderer was. Marsh, who figures this out, is soon targeted as well.
Captured by Reilly, Marsh escapes her death-by-mulcher by swinging out of the way while dangling from the ceiling. She ends up breaking free and gunning down the murderer just as the other police show up, Marsh kills Reilly on his own website. As the film ends, the website receives numerous requests for a video of Reilly's death.
*************************************************************************
Special Agent Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane) is a widowed single parent living in a suburban Portland home with her daughter, Annie Haskins (Perla Haney-Jardine). By night, she works in the FBI's cybercrime division with Griffin Dowd (Colin Hanks), fighting identity theft and similar crimes. One night, an anonymous tip leads them to a website called KillWithMe.com. The site features a streaming video of a kitten being tortured and killed. The site cannot be shut down, as whoever created it, knew that someone would try to shut it down, and built into it a fail-safe: everytime the server is closed, a mirror server comes immediately up, in its place.
After the kitten's death, KillWithMe.com's webmaster (Joseph Cross) "graduates" to human victims and makes their deaths correlate directly with the number of hits the site receives. At a press conference, the public is urged to avoid KillWithMe.com, but as Marsh feared, this only increases the site's popularity. The videos are recorded in the killer's basement and his various victims include a helicopter pilot (bled to death by injections of anticoagulant), a newscaster (burnt to death by heat lamps while cemented, up to his mid-thigh, into the floor of the basement); and Griffin Dowd (killed by slowly increasing the concentration of sulfuric acid solution in which he is submerged up to his neck).
At first it seems the victims were randomly chosen, but this is not the case. The first two victims were chosen because they were part of filming or presenting the suicide of a junior college teacher. The teacher's unstable, techno-prodigy son, Owen Reilly, broke down and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. When released, he decided to prove a point (that the public is insatiable for the suffering of others), as well as wreak vengeance on those he felt had exploited his father's tragedy. Dowd was killed because he came close to the truth of who the murderer was. Marsh, who figures this out, is soon targeted as well.
Captured by Reilly, Marsh escapes her death by rotary tiller by swinging out of the way while dangling from the ceiling. She ends up breaking free and pinning down the murderer, and just as the other police officers show up, Marsh fatally shoots Owen on his own website. As the film ends, Marsh displays her badge symbolically and the scene closes with a shot of the dwindling chatter in the website's chat room, featuring the telling statement "a genius died today", as well as showing a couple of "chatters" that are glad the killer is dead and a final comment, asking whether the video could be downloaded. That was a way nice end to the story. But the reason why FBI Detective Marsh was involved was not thoroughly understood.
