Is The Internet That Evil?

So you’re bored and restless and there’s nothing else to do on Sunday but watch more mummies and crocs on NGC.

Or you could go to the theatre and see a movie.

The film

Afraid that No Country for Old Men will in no way equal your experience of last week’s There Will Be Blood, you decide on something else. Somehow you know it’s not going to be very good, but your interest is piqued by its description: the FBI’s Cyber Crime Unit is on the trail of a killer who posts live video of his victims on an untraceable web site.

That’s when you buy a ticket for Untraceable.

And let me put you straight out of your misery, thus sharing mine, and tell you that yes the film is utter crap.

Short pitch: the main character is a nerd whose dad committed suicide, an event that was televised nationwide and put on the internet for all to see. Now he’s set up a site called killwithme.com where he streams video of his torturing the people who were involved in the initial spreading of that internet shock video. Revenge. Shocking.

And then the cops chase and kill him.

Not so geeky

The film half-heartedly attempts to address a geeky audience but fails miserably. I got half a laugh out of it over one or two jokes, but mostly this was another of those dismally misinformed movies where keyboards make annoying bleeping noises and programs use overly complex GUIs that needlessly zoom in and out all the time.

Even a login screen becomes some 3D widget that hovers and squeaks like an R2-unit sucked up in a Jawa Sand Crawler.

Then there was the house the killer breaks into to use as a front which has the number 8808. Not sure where the joke was in that, because obviously 8088 would have been funnier.

All the internet’s fault

What the movie tries to touch on, is somehow interesting though: the way so much violence and destruction manages to find its way on the net and how there will always be an audience for that. Accidents, suicides, beheadings, rape… all caught on camera, all uploaded in an instant and watched by millions.

The way this is symbolized in the film is how the victims die: the more viewers tune in, the more poison or acid is administered, and the sooner it’s all over for the abducted unfortunates. That way, it’s not the killer who is responsible but the herd, which always wants more gore, more shock, more awe.

When the film concludes, and the killer has been shot, the camera travels dramatically past one of the displays, and shows viewers’ comments pop up in a Ustream-style online chat window. “Y aint the dude moving?” one asks. “Coz the sobs dead u moron” replies another. The last one says: “Where can i download this movie?”

Okay, the film was rather gruesome and unsettling. I needed some time to adjust to the fact this was just another work of fiction, like Se7en was, for instance. And that, while someone did find the inspiration for it, and came up with these horrible ways of torture, they were indeed just a fantasy.

But all in all, I wasn’t very much convinced.

Or is it really that bad?

Sure, there is a lot of strange folk out there. Some even flock to the web and post all kinds of terrible stuff. And we only have to think back to what happened to Kathy Sierra to realize that sometimes it does come awfully close to reality. But all in all I wondered if the internet is really that bad a place.

And if it is, is that because of the users, who sometimes cross a line and watch that beheading, that suicide, or is it because of the odd freak that shows up and actually uploads it?

And if the latter is the case, then what does it have to do with the internet?

Because then it’s just that: the freak who uses any medium available to get his twisted thoughts out there. Just think Jack the Ripper and his letters, the Unabomber and his mail bombs.

And if the latter is the case, then the internet isn’t the awful place it’s made out to be, and this film, Untraceable, truly is worthless.

And I think it’s just that.

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Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Interview: ’Drag Me To Hell’ Director Sam Raimi
• Hiding from Untraceable
• Tracking Web Predators

Tags: crime, untraceable, violence