Untraceable

This high concept, high-tech gore fest begins with the death of a fluffy white kitten, quickly ramping up to trapped and terrified humans, when a crazed killer goes online to broadcast the deaths of his helpless victims. The interactive website serves as a platform for the moralistic murderer's (hi, Jigsaw!) M.O., and it seems that the only person who can save the world is a world-weary FBI agent (hi, Gideon!).

It is truly like an episode of Criminal Minds meets one of the Saw films with Untraceable, a gruesome R-rated thriller starring Diane Lane as the fibby hot on the heels of a sick cyber-slasher. She plays Agent Jennifer Marsh, a single mom who lives with her (also single) mom, puts in long work days, and flirts listlessly with her colleague, Det. Eric Box (Billy Burke), after the two team up to stop the terrible techie (played by Joseph Cross).

The killer's popular, much-spoofed, super-secret — and yes, untraceable — site is called KillWithMe.com, and it invites users to spur him on to more elaborate crimes. The more people who log on and refer friends, the quicker the prey is quashed. His most insidious plan culminates into the highest stakes game of web cat-and-mouse ever, when he kidnaps one of  the FBI's Cyber Crimes division's own (likable monitor monkey Griffin Dowd, played by an equally affable Colin Hanks).

For horror fans, there are some pretty grisly death sequences. However, whatever guilty pleasures we may experience through these types of movies are taken away from us in the presentation of an overly-serious, no-verve exercise. The slayer isn't particularly fun, quirky or especially smart (ala Hannibal Lecter, for instance), and the heroes are too pat to really identify with on many levels (not a single Will Graham here).

The actors do their level best — the troika of Lane, Burke and Hanks pull equal weight — and there are some good, cheesy lines ("More will die in the blink on an eye," says Lane with a straight, grim face), but there's really not much to glom onto here. The au-courant, set-piece heavy script is skilled enough and the characterization are competent, but still Untraceable feels hollow (the killer's reasons are token at best) and even downright distasteful (there's a blatant reference to journalist Daniel Pearl's on-camera execution).

While the movie is refreshingly misogyny-free and it does feature a strong female lead to boot, it's ultimately a shame that Gregory Hoblit — a director who once mastered stylish suspense (see: 1996's Primal Fear, or 1998's Fallen) — is now just wading through the genre's other more fallow machinations (don't see: 2007's Fracture, or Untraceable) and streaming horror by rote.

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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson

Watch Horror.com's exclusive on-camera interview with Diane Lane here.