BEFORE: My genre-mixing continues, as I follow a zany school-based comedy with a crime drama about hunting a serial killer. But Colin Hanks carries over from "Orange County" so I hope that justifies it. I did a whole serial-killer chain way back in 2013, with everything from "Zodiac" to "Summer of Sam", "Wild at Heart" and "Natural Born Killers", and it sort of feels like I've been doing little follow-ups ever since, with movies like "Red Dragon" and "Monster" last year. I don't think I've got anything else like that currently on my watchlist, but I never know when another one is going to pop up.
THE PLOT: 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.
AFTER: My first thought after watching this is that I really miss the "CSI" shows - remember that trend, where it seemed like every crime could be solved just through forensic science, and not through those dusty outdated methods like interviewing suspects or going on stakeouts? Even when the show morphed into "CSI: Cyber" and they tried in vain to keep the series alive for another year or so, but I guess every dog has his day, and eventually other shows like "Criminal Minds" and "Person of Interest" came around to take slightly different approaches. But damn, I was invested into three hours of "CSI" every week there for a while, to the point where it felt strange when the shows ended and I got all that time back.
I think a lot of the trend goes back to "The Silence of the Lambs" and its sequels and prequels, I don't think it was a coincidence that they hired William Petersen for the original "CSI" show, since he starred in "Manhunter" back in 1986, they even put him up against Tom Noonan as a villain once, with a giant wink to the audience. I thought of "The Silence of the Lambs" while watching "Untraceable" because it pulled the same cheap stunt, which is to use parallel editing to make the audience THINK that the FBI is about to bust down the door of the killer's house, only to have the rug pulled out from under us, when we realize that the killer is one step ahead and the Feds' Intel has sent them to the wrong place. "CSI" would pull that trick too, if there was still a half-hour left in the episode, you'd kind of know that things weren't going to get wrapped up so soon.
Way back in 2008, I guess this is what people were afraid the internet would get used for, someone would find a way to get snuff films broadcast out to a larger audience. But did that ever really happen, or did people get mostly distracted by cute panda-cams and arguments over whether that dress was blue and black or gold and white? I mean, outside of ISIS web-streaming a beheading or two, has society really descended into the kind of depravity seen here, or are people generally just more interested in porn, Netflix and Amazon Prime? OK, sure, we've still got hackers but they seem mostly interested in stealing credit card numbers and influencing elections, not live executions.
I must be slipping, I didn't notice the references to "Mad Men" - Colin Hanks mentions an upcoming date with "Peggy the secretary", and he did a guest appearance on a couple episodes of that show - or to "The Shining", with the lead FBI agent staying in room 237 at a hotel. We should all know not to ever go into room 237, right? I wonder if hotels around the world encounter people who won't stay in that room, like the way some buildings don't have a 13th floor. (Yes they do, it's just been renamed as the 14th floor! If landlords were truly superstitious, they'd build a 13th floor and just let it remain empty.)
The fear in making a film like this should have related to possibly inspiring someone out there to mimic the actions in the film, where the increased traffic to a web-site would hasten a victim's death, sort of like a Groupon for torture fans. Which is ironic, because in the film the FBI agent doesn't want her boss to hold a press conference, because any publicity for the crime would only encourage people to visit the site more, which would also increase the rate of the murder. And yet they never mentioned that at least some of the traffic to the site came from the FBI agents themselves, who had to log on there to search for evidence. Hey, it's all about the hit counts at the end of the day, right? What a world...
Also starring Diane Lane (last heard in "Inside Out"), Billy Burke, Joseph Cross (last seen in "Lincoln"), Mary Beth Hurt (last seen in "Red Dragon"), Peter Gray Lewis (last seen in "The Bourne Legacy"), Perla Haney-Jardine (last seen in "Kill Bill: Vol. 2"), Jesse Tyler Ferguson (last heard in "Ice Age: Collision Course"), Tyrone Giordano (last seen in "The Family Stone"), Tim DeZarn, Christopher Cousins (last seen in "For Love of the Game"), Dax Jordan, John Breen, Brynn Baron.
RATING: 5 out of 10 mirror servers
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