Untraceable

I finally watched for the first time, Untraceable. Directed by Gregory Hoblit and with no major stars, first impression was hardly excitement, yet by positive word of mouth by various people I finally took the plunge into watching it.

The whole plot of live killings on the internet only when a certain number of people would log into the certain website, was quite thrilling in the sense that with this day and age, many are on the internet without any hassle, accessible from phones, laptops, even the iPad I'm typing on now (the same function of the distribution of films). This then flipped the genre from being fictional, to being very surreal. So the plot was indeed very interesting and positive on the whole, yet I felt the whole use of camera failed it for me.

There were no interesting shots (like a cantered angle or a close up with the back ground being out of focus or indeed a focus pull) which would have made the killer much more mysterious and creepy. Also sound, especially non-diegetic wasn't used to its advantage, it created suspense, but didn't put me in any mood/atmosphere which could have easily made the killer much more creepy if the right sort of music was applied.

Maybe I'm bias, as I love editing from shows such as 'Sherlock' and 'Whitechapel' even if they had used improvisational skills like in 'This is England' the camera would have been better used, yet the film was American, and I am used to English programmes and films.