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Untraceable - was unremarkable
From IMDB: "FBI
agent Jennifer Marsh is tasked with hunting down a seemingly
untraceable serial killer who posts live videos of his victims on the
Internet. As time runs out, the cat and mouse chase becomes more
personal."
I'm
very surprised that this was "R" rated. It has very little gore and the
methods that the psycho uses to kill his victims are more akin to
something out of "Batman" than "Saw".
To
say that "Untraceable" is derivative is an understatement. There is
nothing here that you haven't already seen done in another film and
done a lot better too. Even the laughable techno-babble of "Hackers" is
included. I'm just surprised that they didn't have big glowing screens
with the words projected on the faces of the computer users as well.
Without
giving too much away, there were some huge plot holes in this which
unintentionally made it more of a comedy to me than a thriller. Why,
for instance, didn't the police just shut the power down to the city
for a few hours? That would certainly have screwed-up the evil genius'
death machines and his internet connection especially if he was using a
laptop. There's no way his battery life would have lasted longer than
30 minutes with all that nonsense hooked up to it.
Another
thing was how come the clever FBI internet woman didn't have a firewall
and virus checker on her home computer? More to the point, what the
hell was she doing letting her 8 year old play games on it in the first
place? It totally ruined the credibility of the character just to put
in a pointless filler scene in of the psycho stalking the little girl
with a webcam. Does nobody think these things through when they make a
film? Obviously not.
Anyway,
I really didn't see this as a real horror film at all. It reminded me a
lot of "Copycat" for some reason especially as it uses one or two set
pieces that all the other "cop v. serial killer" films have. As a
thriller, I suppose it's entertaining but it's just not original enough
to be memorable. 2 out of 10.
