Untraceable(2008): Review

Untraceable is yet another serial-killer flick with mediocre plot. This movie is about about a serial killer, who streams each of his victims murder on his site named www.killwithme.com. As the name of the site suggests, more the traffic to the site, quicker the victim dies, which makes viewers kill the victim along with him.

Jennifer Marsh, a secret agent who works with cyber-crime department spots the killers site and finds him stream live video of a cat being killed. She immediately reports it to her higher authority and tries to shutdown the site. Even after several attempts, she was not able to shutdown this site(servera directa NASA space shuttlea vechurupaan pola). Finally her boss asked her to do some useful work rather trying to shutdown an useless site.

Next day, the site again streams a live video. This time its not a cat, but a man, who is chained and some poisonous chemical is injected on him. She frantically tries to locate the server only to find out that the server is mirrored in different countries! Eventually the victim dies as the viewers swarm to the site.

The killer finds his next victim. He chains him and places him in front of high voltage bulbs. The intensity of the bulb increases with the number of visitors. This time, her boss tries to use his head and comes up with a dumb idea of telling the press about it. After the press release, the visitors to the site increase in an alarming rate. Just before he looses his consciousness, he tries to tell the address, but the killer escapes from there before cops zero down the place. As a progress, the agent finds out that the killer is allowing viewers only from US. But failed to know an obvious fact that they can ban a particular site in their country!!

His next victim is our agents partner. He is kidnapped and is kept in a big glass tub filled with water. It is connected to a tube passing sulphuric acid. As usual, the rate at which the acid flows in to the tub is directly proportional to the amount of viewers to the site. This time, the victim being a secret agent, he tries to convey something in morse code using his eyes. The agent tried to tell the word 'our suicide'. Using these words alone, our super agent Jennifer Marsh finds out that the killer is the son of a suicide victim(iva oru pombala Vijayakanth!), whose death video was broad-casted in many news channels.

His first victim was the person who sold this fathers skull for a big sum. His second victim was a TV reporter who broadcasted the video and his third victim was the agent who did not do anything to stop the broadcast. All these details are surprisingly derived from the morse code!!

After solving the case in a jiffy, she drives home. For some reason she rides back(i actually fell asleep by this time). On her way back, her car stops on its own and the killer speaks with her through some wireless connected to her car. She breaks the window to escape out of the car and talks to her friend and asked him to pick her up. But, all of a sudden, the car starts on its own again, but this time the killer is hiding in the back seat! As usual, the killer kidnaps her to some garage where he hangs her upside-down with some chopper motor spinning below her head.

The rope is released with the number of visitors to his site. She being a secret agent, uses her training skills and tries to swing the rope to get hold of a pole in one corner. The killer being really smart in creating untraceable sites, failed to note people tied upside down could swing! When the killer goes near her to release her grip, she attacks him using a fire extinguisher and cuts the rope to release herself. She then attacks him vigorously and finally kills him with a gun lying on the floor. After killing him, she flashes her badge to the camera(enna oru budhisali thanam!).

On the whole, this movie is again a mash-up of movies like Saw. The director expects the viewer to be totally dumb(untraceable sites are ultimate fantasies). Looking at the poster of the movie, which pretty-much looked like Silence of the lambs movie poster, i really expected much more from this movie.