masri's pandemonium.: Untraceable (2008)

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Untraceable (2008)

Picture taken from: http://www.thehkneo.com/08/untraceable.htm

I watched this movie recently and it made me fear of the society that I'm living with today. The Internet Generation has it's costs and benefits. The dangers of the internet and how easy information can be gained is shown in this movie. Also, the actions that society is responsible for makes you wonder whether we are safe or not. The dependency that we have on the internet is so great, from books, to music, to videos, we forget we are giving out our personal information that could potentially be used for research and marketing strategies.

In any case, the movie has a tech-savvy internet predator is displaying his graphic murders on his own website -- and the fate of each of his tormented captives is left in the hands of the public: the more hits his site gets, the faster his victims die. The phrase I'd like to emphasize here is: Left in the hands of the public. Throughout the movie, the number of hits the site gets increases exponentially. This should be worrying. What does this tell you about us?

Why would be want to participate in such horrendous act? Obviously this is just a movie but this situation is likely to happen in real life. Think about the number of times you watch a Youtube video because someone asked you too, or because you were curious? Doesn't matter what the content was but when you think about it, this does happen. In this case, 'Curiousity kills the Cat" - to make things even more morbid, the movie begins with the predator killing a kitten!

In relation to the movie, it shows how people are subconsciously killers - "the number of hits the site gets, the faster the victims die". Our 'animal-like instinct to want to kill show (though, the difference between Us, humans and animals is that we do not act upon it -contradictory to this however are the murderers and killers who do kill).