Introduction
The movie “Untraceable”, is an American Psychological thriller movie, released in the year 2008. This movie was directed by Gregory Hoblit, a renowned film director and television producer. The movie ‘Untraceable’ featured actors like Diane Lane playing Jennifer Marsh, Colin Hanks playing Griffin Dowd, Billy Burke playing Eric Box and Joseph Cross playing Owen Reilley among others.
In the opening scene of the movie, a basement is shown where a person is shown to set up a glue trap for a kitten, which is trapped in a cage. After pouring the milk into a bowl for the kitten, a person opens the cage. The kitten comes out of the cage and heads toward the milk bowl, which is right in front of the cage. The kitten is stuck on the glue while the person is filming the entire scene.
Office routine of Jennifer
In the next scene, the main lead of the movie, Jennifer Marsh gets down from her car and heads toward her office on a rainy night. She is working with the FBI office and after entering her chamber, meets her co-worker, Griffin Dowd who is also entering at the same time. Griffin tells her about her latest girlfriend while Jennifer is busy logging on to her computer. Griffin tells her that his date with the girl yesterday was good and she looks exactly the same as in her photograph. Jennifer jokes to him that, she won’t meet him again as he doesn’t look the same as he is in the photograph.
Jennifer is after some guy for many weeks, who keeps changing his name and is involved in the piracy of music. She deliberately clicks one of his suspected links, of the free music download offers. The person tries to steal all the financial data and her passwords too. But Jennifer is smart enough and makes him interact with a dummy machine. Jennifer sends the guy a trojan virus and sets him up, who is involved in the many online thefts. She ultimately tracks him and alerts the cops who arrest him.
In the meanwhile, a fellow co-worker hands over Jennifer, a note forwarded by her department which is a tip-off note. The note has the killwithme.com website address written on it. She enters the website address and notices that the website is streaming live images of a cat with a television behind it, which runs an advertisement. She gets the information that the online thief has been apprehended by the FBI, which Jennifer appreciates.
Introduction of Jennifer’s family
She drives her home in the morning, although getting stuck in traffic for some time due to an accident on the road. On reaching her home, she is greeted by her mother Mary Beth Hurt. After putting her gun away and laptop in her room, she goes to her daughter Annie’s room. Jennifer helps her daughter get ready for school and then drops her at the bus stand for school. After the showers, Jennifer is joined on the bed by her cat and she gets reminded of the cat incident on the website Killwithme.com. Jennifer opens her laptop and enters to the site to the site to find the status of the cat. She finds that the cat is still there but there are a lot of weird comments on the status of the cat.
In the office, Jennifer’s boss Peter comes to her to check the status of the cat, but Jennifer tells him that she is already dead. She informs Peter that she is trying to close the site, but there are a lot of servers, that are used to mirror the site. Jennifer also tells him that whenever she tries to close the site down, the host of the website finds another server and runs the site on that. Peter tells Jennifer that they need to focus on more serious things than just a cat since they can’t do much about this as the mirror servers are in Russia which is beyond their jurisdiction. In another scene, there is a parking lot in the stadium where a hockey game is going to take place.
It starts to get serious now
Somewhere, a man after coming out of his car, approaches another car and asks a person inside, if he is the one who has got the extra ticket for the upcoming game. Suddenly, someone in the car attacks the man with a teaser gun and drags him into his car.
Jennifer is with her daughter and mother when she gets a phone call informing her about the incident. She rushes to her room computer to check the website killwithme.com. Jennifer finds a man with his hands tied and mouth gagged and blood oozing out of his nose. This one is also being streamed live, with killwithme etched on his chest. She informs her boss Peter about this and tells him that the person is now focusing on humans in place of animals.
Griffin, her colleague informs them, that it is the same basement where the live streaming of the cat took place. He also makes them notice the live count of the people watching the streaming and that the caption that the more people watch, the sooner he dies. The details of the chemical dosage are also being beamed live.
Planned murder by someone
Griffin tells them that there is a mechanism that controls the amount of chemical dosage which goes into the veins of that man. Although Jennifer’s boss Peter tells them that the cuts don’t seem to be much deeper enough to kill him, Jenifer tells him that the IV which the person is being subjected to is some anti-coagulant, which is preventing his blood to coagulate and thinning it.
They conclude that since the IV is attached to the computer, the more people visit the website, the more the dosage of the anti-coagulant chemical goes into the man and the sooner he can die. Griffin further informs that the victim is Hebert Miller, who works for Burnside Executive Charter. The man informed his wife that some friend of his friend has emailed him that he is offering him the tickets for the winter hawks game. Miller told his wife that he shall return soon after getting the tickets from him.
Entry of Detective Eric
In another scene, there is a huge gathering of the media in front of the Miller house and reporters are asking her questions about her husband. Detective Eric Box from the police department visits the Miller residence and tries to keep the reporters away. Mrs. Miller is advised by Detective Box that she should not talk to the press and keep away from the computer.
Here Jennifer comes to know that the killer has blocked all the foreign sites and only the Americans can have the access to his site. Griffin tells her that the killer had hacked into the account of someone named Andrew Kilbourne and started to advertise for his website through this account. Jennifer along with Griffin checks the status of Miller on the computer and finds him still in the same place bleeding and gagged. Griffin regrets that Miller was not a boy scout, otherwise, he could have blinked the morse code and given some hint of his whereabouts.
On investigation, they find that the IP address is from a restaurant known as Chang’s restaurant, where half of their office staff has its meals. They conclude that the killer wanted them to find the IP address that he is using. Just then Detective Box arrives in their office and Peter, her boss introduces him to Jennifer.
Jennifer is given the responsibility to handle the case
Peter tells Jennifer that from now on, she will be handling the case, but still isn’t too concerned about the situation, that Miller is facing. Jennifer and Detective Box have a discussion on the case where Jennifer tells him that she does not have much to share other than the website which the killer is using. Box tells her that he had a meeting with the abducted and dead kitten’s owner but nothing substantial came out of it either. Both agree that there doesn’t seem to be any concrete reason why the killer Chose Miller, or that cat as his victim.
Jennifer tells Detective Box that the website is untraceable. They soon realize on the monitor that the victim Miller is dead and weird comments like “Laughing on the floor”, “More to Come” and “thanks for the support” are seen on the computer. Next, the killer is typing the name of his victim Miller, his occupation and his date of death and just after that, the session gets closed.
In the next scene, there is a locality shown, where the media people can be heard discussing the murder of Miller. A guy is shown talking on the phone and when he opens the back door of his car, he discovers the dead body of Miller. The person is actually some congressman in whose car the killer dumped the body of Miller. Soon the police arrive on the spot, and a press conference is held by the police and they announce that the FBI will be in charge of the case.
Jennifer and detective Box discuss that there seems to be no link between Miller and the congressman, and just it seems to be an attempt of the murderer to get attention, as the case will get highlighted. Box gets a message on his phone that some guy named Arthur Elmer, was found to be excited about the killwithme.com website since the time the kitten was found dead. He tells Jennifer that this guy Arthur was fired from a tech company for setting up a wireless webcam in some men’s room.
Some clues about the killer
Detective Box heads towards Arthur’s place to get some clue about this guy. He checks the basement of his home and finds some illegally downloaded movies there. Jennifer is in the office and she comes to the conclusion that Arthur has no connection with the killing since he was on a continuous chat with someone for twelve hours.
In the next scene, Jennifer is with her family in the evening and while working on her laptop, she wonders why would the killer hack Kilbourne’s account and use it to advertise his website. She calls Griffin, who is just about to leave for a date with his girlfriend. Jennifer tells Griffin that maybe Kilbourne and the killer may have some connection. Griffin agrees and then she reminds Griffin that he has to come to her place on Sunday to attend her daughter’s birthday party. Griffin asks her if she can bring her date to the party and she agrees.
In the morning, Jennifer’s daughter is shown to download a game that her friend gave her. On the birthday, Griffin brings all the gifts and the pizzas for Jennifer’s daughter Annie. Jennifer tells Griffin she has been following Kilbourne for some time and it seems that he was mostly on the internet but has died recently, due to not taking his insulin shots. She however thinks that maybe Kilbourne was killed by the same killer, since an hour after Kilbourne’s death, the killwithme site went up.
Introduction of the killer
In the next scene, a man David William visits a house and a young man greets him at the door and invites him inside. Here, Detective Box is shown visiting Annie’s birthday party, as Griffin had falsely told him that it is Griffin’s birthday party. Box wants to leave but Jennifer insists that he stays for some snacks.
Again, the next scene shows us the same house which David visits. He has been invited by the guy through the email about some boxcar which David was interested to buy. David is invited by the guy towards the area through the kitchen area, to have a look at the boxcar. As soon as he passes near the stairs, the guy uses the same taser to shock him which results in David falling down the stairs.
Jennifer introduces Annie to Detective Box, who wishes her a happy birthday. Griffin gives Annie her birthday present and wishes her. At the same time, Jennifer, Detective Box and Griffin’s phone starts ringing as if it is an emergency and all the three leave the place. Griffin’s girlfriend arrives, but Griffin doesn’t stay and leaves.
Murderer strikes again
Here, in the next scene, William David’s hands and legs are tied, his mouth gagged and is surrounded by wet concrete in which his legs are trapped. A skating park is shown in which a young guy is shown logging on to the website killwithme.com in which he finds the father of his friend tortured. He alerts his friend who is shocked to find his father in this position.
In the FBI office, where the officials are watching the live stream, Griffin tells his colleagues that this person is David William and he is a former reporter with channel 12 and nowadays hosts a TV show. Jennifer’s boss wants to hold a press conference to warn people to stay away from the website. However, Jennifer tries to stop him from doing this as she warns him that the killer wants this sort of publicity only and in this way, David’s life will be in more danger. She also urges him to contact people from the NSA who are well equipped and capable to track such people, but her boss doesn’t listen and goes ahead with the press conference.
Here Williams is shown in front of heating lamps with the intensity of the heat increasing continuously and he is stuck in the cement. Here, FBI boss, Peter is urging the people not to log into the website, but the people are not listening and more and more people are showing up. David William is shown to be developing blisters due to the heat intensity. But through lip gestures, he somehow manages to provide the house address where he was attacked.
The FBI get the clue and they raid the premises which turned out to be the wrong one, as there was no one there, barring a laptop that was streaming the FBI press conference. Jennifer and Boz discuss how people are becoming insane to visit the site to witness the victim suffer the trauma and the torture. She also tells Box that the guy was there but got away before the raid. The killer is shown where he is accessing the files from Jennifer’s computer.
Murderer gets sharper than before
He has managed to hack the computer of Jennifer. Annie is shown to wake up in the morning and turn her TV on, which is showing her house. She informs her other Jennifer about this but her mother who is in the shower, is not able to listen properly. Annie goes outside and Jennifer comes out of the Shower. She gets a call from Griffin who alerts her that her house is being streamed live. Jennifer notices that Annie is on the TV in front of her house, which makes her nervous. She takes a gun and runs downstairs to look for Annie and for the camera outside her house. Jennifer finds Annie outside and instructs her to go inside and approaches a car that has a camera mounted in it. She just knocks off the camera with her gun.
The cops arrive at the spot and when the car is opened, they are shocked to find the blistered dead body of David inside. Jennifer tells Detective Box that probably the game that Annie downloaded had a trojan virus and the same was used by the killer to infiltrate into her computer. She fears that the killer has access to all her files on the computer. Jennifer sends her mother and her daughter Annie to a safer place due to the threat posed by the killer. Detective Box suggests that she also leave with them, for the sake of Annie who has already lost one of her parents, but Jennifer stays.
Griffin calls Jennifer to check whether everything went smoothly regarding her family being shifted by the Bureau. She informs him that they are alright and she will stay somewhere near the office. Griffin tells her that there is surely some connection between the killer and Kilbourne and that the killer knows that she is leading the team which is following the case. Griffin tells her that he can give her more insights on this but needs to be sure first.
Now the murderer lays a hand on the FBI official
After that Griffin gets a call which Griffin mistakes for Melanie, but it is the killer who is talking disguising his voice through computer software. The basement is shown where someone is again made the victim with the hand and legs tied to a chair and the naked victim inside the water tank. The victim is Griffin, who has been made the next victim. The FBI officials can see all this live streaming and the FBI boss asks for the NSA’s help which is denied to him.
On zooming in on the picture, it becomes clear that an overhead container containing sulphuric acid is connected with the tubes of water in which Griffin has been kept. The more people join in, the more acid will be leaked into the tank water, and the faster Griffin can die. People keep logging in and more and more acid flows into the water tank.
Slowly, the acid starts to burn the skin of Griffin. The killer moves away as he can’t take the smell of the burning skin of Griffin and leaves the room. Griffin starts to blink his eyes and provides the Morse codes through this process. The FBI tries to decipher the language and comes up with the term Our Suicide. But soon after, Griffin succumbs to the torture and dies.
Jennifer is broken from inside
Jennifer is shown talking to her daughter Annie on the telephone as Annie doesn’t know anything about Griffin’s death. She conveys her hello to Griffin through her mother which makes Jennifer very emotional as Griffin was her colleague.
Just then Detective Box visits her and brings food to her. He informs Jennifer that the acid was stolen from the research Lab at Marshall junior college. Box also tells Jennifer that probably Griffin was trapped by the killer through a phone call but it seems that the caller can’t be traced as the call was made through a spoof card. Jennifer tells him that the killer might have gotten the hint of Griffin’s vulnerability to internet dating, by hacking into Griffin’s computer too.
In the morning, she opens her laptop and enters the disc that Griffin gave her, to get a clue about the killer. She also has the code ‘our suicide’ on the notepad entered by her colleague in the office while deciphering the code from Griffin. Detective Box, who was also there for the night, gets up and finds Jennifer opening the files from the disc containing Kilbourn’s uploads. She tries to search the word suicide in the search box and comes up with the video ‘rush hour suicide’.
The video is about a video of a man who shoots himself in the head, resulting in his falling from the bridge and landing on a car. Jennifer tells Box that probably this was what Griffin tried to say while gesturing in the code language. Detective Box tells her that he was near this place a week ago to meet the dead cat’s owner Scotty Hillman who works there only. Jennifer asks him the name of the professor but Box doesn’t know. But he tells Jennifer that he thinks the professor taught chemistry in some college. Jennifer tries to connect the dots and says that he must have been teaching in Marshall Junior College, the place from where the acid was stolen by the killer.
Jennifer solves the mystery
The next scene shifts to the FBI office where Jennifer explains the entire thing. She shows the picture of Andrew Kilbourne on the screen and says that Kilbourne recommended the killwithme dot com website after he was dead. The fact is that the killer hacked his account to do this, and when Griffin tried to investigate the matter, he was killed.
Then Jennifer shows the picture of the deceased professor James Reilley, who shot himself 16 months ago, on the Broadway bridge in rush hour, after being depressed by his wife’s death. There were many traffic copters that day but the only one that covered the entire episode was from channel 12. Since there regular pilot of that helicopter was unwell that day, so the job of flying the copter was given to Herbert Miller.
Jennifer further says that Miller was believed to reveal to his friends, that he was lucky that day to be at the spot at the right moment. Jennifer goes on and says that the back of the skull of the professor and his glasses fell on the rooftop of the Diner underneath the bridge. The skull was recovered and sent for the post mortem but the glasses were retrieved by one of the Diner’s employees Scotty Hillman, the dead cat’s owner, who put up them for online sale and they got sold too. But there was outrage on this kind of sale and almost all the TV channels apologized for this news as all the children were back to their homes from their schools by the afternoon and seeing the footage.
The only channel that didn’t apologize was channel 12 since they had the highest TRP that day due to this news. Cashing on this news, they sent their reporter Willian David to interview the people about this suicide episode and incidentally met the local businessman on whose car, James Reilly landed after his death. Channel 12 again aired the suicide video for those people who they thought might have missed this news. But Kilbourne shot the entire video and posted it on five different shock video sites. And from then onwards, this news was the most discussed news in the city among the public. This video was being talked about by some five million people in which some were expressing shock, some laughing, some gossiping and giving all sorts of reactions.
The murderer gets revealed
Jennifer further adds that James Reilley has a son, Owen Reilley who was shattered by his father’s death. Although being a brilliant student of electronics, mechanics and computers, he was disturbed mentally due to being alone and shocked by his father’s suicide. He is even hospitalized for six months and has been released six months ago only. The x-ray image shown on the website is his father James Reilley’s skull and the number depicted above the skull is the date of his father’s death. Owen now lives alone in the house.
The next scene shows the FBI agents raiding the house but they can’t find the killer. In the basement, the decaying body of Griffin still lies in the tank which is a very horrible scene for Jennifer to watch who gets very emotional. After some time, she is in the office where her boss expresses grief and condoles her on Griffin’s death as he and Jennifer were working together. Jennifer’s Boss Peter advises her to take a break for a week but she refuses and agrees to go only for a day only as she wants to finish this case.
Jennifer gets trapped by the murderer
Now Jennifer is seen leaving the motel and driving on the bridge amidst the rains. All the gadgets of her car and her mobile phone stop working as Owen has hacked into the car. Owen appears on the speaker and tells her to see from the front glass. That is where his father fell over the bridge and dies. Owen tells her that she and her team has been using his father’s death for their own benefit and letting people say and do whatever they want.
Jennifer somehow manages to get out of the car and calls Detective Box from the roadside telephone on the bridge. Box tells her to remain right there and rushes to the spot. Jennifer tries to get back into the car but Owen is already in the back seat of the car and tases her.
The scene changes back to the same basement where Owen has tied Jennifer and is dragging her. Box reaches the bridge but does not find Jennifer or her car. He informs the cops to keep tracking her but finds that Owen has detached her car and they can’t track her. Here Owen hangs Jennifer upside down through a cable and places a rotating saw machine with large blades under her. He connects the cable wire with the computer so that more people watch the stream, and he can keep lowering the cable toward the running blades of the saw machine.
At the FBI office, everyone is tense and aghast to see Jennifer on the killwthmw.com website and Jennifer’s boss Peter calls Detective Box to tell him about this. Box asks him to send the live feed on his phone. Owen is filming the entire thing on his video camera and beaming the live stream on the website and more and more people are joining the website.
Jennifer tries very hard to save herself from being touched by the blades by swinging continuously. Box gets the feed and he understands that she has been kept in the basement of her own house only. Detective Eric Box rushes to Jennifer’s home and alerts others about the same. Here, Jennifer somehow manages to grab a pipe which Owen notices and he approaches Jennifer.
Jennifer fights back
She catches onto some knob and opens it which throws some hot liquid substance on Owens’s face. Owen is injured in the face and is thrown at some distance. Jennifer manages to reach the lever of the box that controls the movement of the cable. The cable rewinds and loosens the cable, throwing her to the ground. She punches Owen with her elbows several times as Owen is still recovering from the hot liquid shock. Owen throws her off and grabs the Saw machine which is still running.
He approaches Jennifer to kill her but Jennifer had been able to grab the gun and she shoots him many times which kills Owen there only. Eric Box arrives with other cops and all this feed is witnessed by everyone through the live stream including the officials at the FBI office, who are elated. She flashes her badge on the camera which gets captured on the screen as the last feed. Comments start to appear on the website and the movie ends there.
