Untraceable
Untraceable is a 2008 thriller movie.
Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane) is a single mother and an agent for the FBI's cyber crime unit with her partner Griffin Dowd (Colin Hanks). Their new case is tracking down and trying to bring down a new Web site, KillWithMe.com, which consists of streaming video of a cat put in a Saw-esque death trap, a chatroom for comments and a viewing counter which, as it rises, makes the death trap more and more dangerous for the victim inside. As the webmaster, Owen Reilly (Joseph Cross), moves up to human victims, the site's popularity grows, making the deaths on screen happen faster and faster.
The film is more or less a Take That against media sensationalization of violence and Gorn.
Tropes used in Untraceable include:
- Always Murder
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Every male victim suffers through a slow and agonising death that even if someone managed to rescued them in time would leave lasting and obvious scarring. Jennifer is put in a death trap that will either kill her instantly or allow her to escape untouched.
- Book Ends: the movie starts with a car ride through Portland while it rains and the radio switches from the national to the local news. The same happens in the scene before the showdown.
- Chekhov's Gun: The punching bag.
- Chekhov's Skill: the morsecode eye-blinking. Another case where it is averted is with Annie's Karate skills.
- Disproportionate Retribution: What the whole thing turns out to be.
- Even Evil Has Standards: For what the killer does, he would not touch Annie, and states that on the website.
- Everything Is Online
- Everyone Knows Morse: averted, Jennifer notices it is morsecode, but gets somebody else to decipher it.
- Fallen
- Forced to Watch: With the whole Internet joining in.
- Gorn
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Every click brings somebody closer to death and the people keep hitting the site.
- Murder.Com: the untraceable website.
- Murder Simulators
- Real Is Brown: A lot of blues and greys, very few vibrant colors.
- Revenge: The main Motivation of the Killer.
- Serial Killer
- Shout-Out: The weedwhacker is from Braindead.
- Snuff Film
- Stalker Without a Crush: the killer starting about halfway through the movie.
- Too Dumb to Live: A couple of examples in this film. Most present one is how Jennifer gets captured. Basically, her electrically run SUV stops, she gets out of the car and walks away. Then when the SUV magically starts again, sits right back down into the driver's seat without a second thought.
- Torture Cellar
- Western Terrorist: what the head of the field agent first makes him out to be. Including comparison to the Unabomber and Timothy McVeigh