FBI agent Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane, pictured) tackles a grisly life-and-death investigation when she identifies a killer who posts gruesome images of his victims' torture and death onto the internet. To make matters worse, his torture methods intensify as more people log on to the website, making the need to find him quickly all the more urgent.
But the killer, Owen Reilly (Joseph Cross), is a techno genius and has worked hard to keep his location a secret. When Marsh's partner, Griffin Dowd (Colin Hanks), comes close to discovering his identity and whereabouts, Reilly takes swift and gruesome steps to silence Dowd permanently. Can Marsh stop the slaughter before Reilly snatches a new victim?
As her investigation reveals the connection between the victims, Marsh identifies Reilly's next target - her.
After the success of his 2007 hit thriller, Fracture, director Gregory Hoblit ups the gore quota with his chilling follow-up feature. While it nods in the direction of Saw with its extreme murder methods (slow acid bath, protracted skin blistering), it's society's fascination with violence that lies at the root of the plot. Can you be an accomplice to murder simply by logging on to a website? If you're watching a man slowly bleed to death, you can. But what to do about it? Marsh draws no conclusions as she fights to save her own skin, but Hoblit does a convincing job of posing this modern dilemma.
Thought-provoking and unsettling by turns, Untraceable is a reasonable thriller.
Untraceable is a Film programme that first aired in 2008 and has been classified a 18 certificate.
