Monday 25 August 2014

Review: The Den (2013)

The Den
IMDB rate: 6,0
Genre: Found-footage, Serial Killer

The Den is a bit of a twist on the found-footage genre, while it is indeed a found footage it isn't the shaky camera kind of movie. The movie is basically a screen recording of a macbook. The main character of this movie is visiting a lot of video chat rooms so when we see her, we see her through the camera in the computer. 
It's kinda funny because when we see things happen on her camera the quality is surprisingly good, while I'm pretty sure that the quality on computers is often not very good. 

I think we've all covered our webcams at least once in our life time because of the thought of possible hackers and well, that's exactly what this movie is about. This girl didn't cover her webcam and well, some pretty nasty videos of her were send around online. What I don't get though, when she finally finds out that people hacked her computer and made her webcam record personal stuff, she still doesn't close her laptop at night, meaning they are still able to watch her. This is kinda annoying especially because she is being threatened and they just know everything she does and when she leaves the house and stuff. It's like she doesn't even prevent that they can stalk her. It is a pretty scary idea though, that these people watch every move she makes, and manipulate her that way. It's a really modern movie that's about things that are actually possible to everyone these days.


The perspective is somewhat refreshing, but also a bit boring after a while. Basically we just watch a computer screen the entire time with sometimes a switch to cellphones. The conversations are all through programs comparable with Facetime and stuff, only this program also gives people the ability to chat with random people around the world, something like Omegle. So when she chats with strangers she obviously sees billions of guys jerking off and even the Nigerian Prince that needs to get rid of his money shows up. It's at least a bit of a different twist on the found footage genre.

I think this movie is comparable with the movie Untraceable. Untraceable is also about people being tortured online only with them the torture gets worse when more people start watching. In this movie it's more that one person pays to see someone get stalked and get murdered eventually I believe, at least, that's what I figured from the ending. Apparently there's a sort of torture porn site where you can subscribe to for 99$ and there you can just watch people get crazy basically...

Sometimes we catch a glimpse of the bad guys and I think their outfit is a bit comparable with Michael Myers and The Strangers, definitely not the least scary guys around. The police is definitely not very realistic in this movie because one moment a 'girl' is texting and literally a few seconds later she's found in the bathtub with her wrists cut, while her phone is still in the kitchen. It's seemed kinda obvious to me that she was laying in the bathtub for quite some time already plus she could not text and cut her wrists that quickly after.


The ending is a bit weird and I still don't really know what the entire purpose of these attacks was. They sell it online or something, but I don't really see the point of killing people for nothing. It's a bit weird. When the girl finally escaped I was kinda hoping for her that she would escape actually, the scene was also very cool because she only had one tiny flashlight and she was in a very dark building. It reminded me a lot of one of those horror games where you only have one shitty flashlight, something like Slenderman or something.

The acting wasn't much special, which is kinda sad because I thought the movie was kinda impressing. It's a very modern approach and somewhat realistic too. There are many logical errors in this movie but well, I did enjoy this movie because it was pretty original. I think you should definitely give this movie a chance.

My personal rate: 7/10



No comments:

Post a Comment

You might also like..