Untraceable

You know something ain’t kosher when a movie purporting to offer a critique of sadistic voyeurism opens with a hand-rubbing scene of kitten abuse. A minor turn in the torture porn cycle, ‘Untraceable’ pegs its scenes of calculated torment to a web-phobic police procedural plot that tries to do for cybersnooping what ‘24’ did for ‘enhanced interrogation’.

Diane Lane is an Oregon FBI agent investigating a website on which victims are subjected to fatal ordeals involving cement, sulphuric acid and lawnmowers; the imaginative use of anticoagulants gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘streaming content’. The gimmick is that the more people click on the site, the faster the victim dies, making each of its users An Accomplice To Murder!

Such finger-pointing might – just might – come off a little more credibly if it weren’t interspersed with shots of bubbling skin, necrotising wounds and water-tanks clouded with blood. Genre clichés arrive at broadband speed, from the obstructive senior officer to the cute daughter’s interrupted birthday party.