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Hostel for housewives

If the popularity of trashy tabloids and celebrity sex tapes are any indication, there’s a little voyeur in all of us. Thanks to the Internet, human curiosity can be satisfied in seconds. Untraceable examines what happens when a twisted psychopath takes advantage of that curiosity and uses it to kill.
Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane) is an FBI “cybercop” who, with her partner Griffin Dowd (Colin Hanks), spends her days tracking down sickos, scam artists and hackers trolling the ‘net for victims. The two meet an entirely different kind of monster when they’re tipped off to killwithme.com, a website that first features live streaming video of a kitten stuck in a rat trap. They’re alarmed by what they see but can’t seem to track down where the feed originates. When the kitten finally dies, the FBI is convinced the show is over. A couple days later they realize how wrong they were. The mastermind behind killwithme.com has a new victim- a man snatched from a local sports arena- and has hooked him up to his computer. The more people who visit the site, the faster the guy dies. Once word gets out, people naturally log in by the millions and soon the FBI has a body on their hands with more on the way. Marsh and Dowd team up with Eric Box (Billy Burke), a no nonsense local cop also assigned to the case. Together the trio uses all the resources at their disposal to catch the killer before he strikes again but come up short time and time again. The tables turn when the psycho finally sets his sights on those pursuing him, turning up the heat on the investigation.
To be honest, I really wasn’t expecting much when I first heard about Untraceable. My biggest concern upon seeing the trailers was that the writers would get the technology wrong. Thankfully, the fear was unfounded. Most of what happens in Untraceable could actually happen and it’s clear the writers worked hard to get the technical aspects of the show correct. In fact, it seems like they spent so much time getting those things right that the script and the finished product were neglected.
Untraceable is Hostel for housewives. The murders are brutal but are few and far between; giving audiences not used to such things plenty of time to recover before hitting them with another sick, twisted death. The problem is most people who are into so called “torture porn” have seen far worse, far more frequently in the Eli Roth movies, so Untraceable almost seems like child’s play. The biggest problem hindering the film is the pacing. Between killings, the minutes seem to crawl by. Waiting around for something to happen gets old fast and it seems like 95% of the time that’s exactly what the audience is doing.
For a by-the-numbers wanna-be thriller, some things in Untraceable simply don’t add up. In the second act a normally level-headed agent, who by his own admission has nearly cracked the case, would rather answer a random booty call than catch the killer. Said booty call is, of course, an elaborate ruse – the cyber killer has a voice modulator set on “hot chick” and our boy loses his head and walks right into a trap. What kind of FBI agent falls for the same trick Bugs Bunny pulled on Elmer Fudd at a time like that? It’s inconsistencies like this that further cause Untraceable to stumble.
While most of the actors gave decent performances (particularly Hanks and Lane), Billy Burke’s ridiculously wooden delivery had my husband and I dissolving in giggles from the moment he opened his mouth. His lines are the most memorable but for all the wrong reasons. Burke was a terrible choice for this particular role. He makes a great mustache twirling villain but is completely unconvincing as a good guy, at least in this film.
There are, I admit, some good points to the film. It’s not completely unwatchable and when there is some action it’s the intense edge-of-your-seat kind that you expect from a decent thriller. The torture scenes will definitely have you squirming, if that’s your thing, and the killer’s motivation and ultimate demise is fairly satisfying.
Content-wise, Untraceable is just too gory for some people and too tame for everyone else. That’s why it ultimately fails. There’s genius in the premise but unfortunately the idea was poorly executed. The film’s message to the world about peering too closely into the lives of others is one that should really be heard. Sadly most people who watch Untraceable will either sleep through it or be too nauseous to care.