27 of 31: The Den (2013)

A vain attempt by a formerly prolific blogger to review 31 new (to me) horror films in the 31 days of October. We did it last year and it was a gas. Can we do it once more? Let's find out.

_______________________________________________________

Platform: Netflix on Roku
Starring: Melanie Papalia

Ugh...I know I'm either going to either love this one or really hate it. Meet Elizabeth, she's a Mac. Already I'm depressed. Elizabeth is a grad student who is doing her thesis on online activities of the people that she meets through a website called "The Den." It's basically Chatroulette, which I thought wasn't really a thing anymore. She is on the website 24/7, recording everything for her thesis.

Besides her friends and relatives, she encounters pretty much who you would expect her to encounter on a webcam site. Freaks, creeps, children and freaky, creepy children. I'm not sure why anyone would ever use a website like that. One of the feeds shows a still selfie picture of a young woman or girl. After waiting a few seconds to see if anything happens, she switches to a new user. She winds up back to that feed shortly and receives an instant message telling her to not switch the feed, calling her a dumb cunt in the process. While she is sleeping, we see that someone has hacked her password for the site. The same feed of the selfie of the young woman. This time with an audio track of someone in pain and screaming.

Seems as if our young Elizabeth has found a bona-fide hacker/stalker psychopath. And that's our horror premise right there. The entire movie plays out on the webcam of our heroine and stalker victim. The most obvious thing that we experience through her experiences is that the internet is a scary fucking place, and maybe we aren't meant to live online like that. Online trolls are awful, imagine if they found a way into your real life as well?

I hated just about everyone in this film. It's a terrible, terrible way to live. I guess that's the whole point of the film. That the internet might not be as private as you would like to wish. But it could make for a interesting thriller, if you aren't sick of the "found footage" genre. I guess. It started to annoy me after a while. It's only 81 minutes long, but I was pretty much done with it after just half that.

Enter The Den at your own risk.

Verdant Dude Rating: 1 out of 5 pumpkin ales.