Short Attention Span Review - The Den (2013) - With Chat Room Spoilers

This is a random watch for me. I was looking for some background noise while “working” on a short story. This turned into me drinking coffee and watching the film. Short story, still sitting around waiting to be finished.

Elizabeth is a grad student engaged in a project to examine an online community called The Den. She eventually gets sucked into an online snuff ring, where people are being killed by a group of hooded killers. Apparently, this group is everywhere, as friends and family of Elizabeth are targeted. It ends with Elizabeth being killed and other people paying to watch the video online. The End.

This wasn't the worst use of found footage that I’ve seen. For a sub-genre I don't like, I seem to watch a lot of these movies. Of course, since every other horror film is found footage and I watch a lot of horror films...I guess I’m kind of stuck.

The concept isn’t bad and the story doesn’t require any huge leaps of logic to work. Except, of course, the idea of a mass conspiracy. But, it reminded me of one of my favorite Seventies horror films Race with the Devil, where all of rural Texas is infested with Satan worshipers. This kind of suspension of disbelief is fine with me.

The acting is adequate and our protagonist does a number of smart things. For example, she contacts the police on a number of occasions and, in general doesn’t act too stupid...except she doesn’t just turn off her freaking computer. But, if that happened, no movie. So, I can give them that. The filmmakers try to spice up the static shots with a few things like a go-pro section and some handheld stuff from smart phones. The edited scenes - cutting between different cameras when Elizabeth fights with and kills one of the hooded snuff guys - works, since we are watching the film that is being marketed online. Not a bad concept. I would assume that means the the killers even add in the soundtrack.

The overall message - that you can’t trust anything on the Interwebs and that anonymity gives people an excuse to do anything they want - isn’t very original. But, you could also look at this as just another “mass conspiracy paranoia” film like Race with the Devil or Hostel.

The Den is okay and worth checking out. It is not a great movie, but it is a solid low-budget thriller.