Review by Quin
A couple years ago, I saw a short film on Vimeo called Webcam. It was a pretty disjointed but to-the-point cautionary tale about the dangers of web cam takeovers. I don’t know any of the tech stuff that goes into such a thing, but apparently someone with the know-how can access the webcam on another person’s laptop or wireless device and watch everything they do, as long as the web camera is pointed at them. In the past year or so, I’ve seen this in the news quite a bit as well. It seems most likely to happen if you use a public wi-fi hotspot. I would bet that the chances of this happening are rather slim, but even I put a piece of black tape over my web cam when I’m not using it…and I almost never use it. Obviously other people think about these things too, and when there is fear or concern over a social issue, horror movies are made about those fears. This brings us to The Den, released this last Spring in the U.S. (called Death Online for its Russian release – which might be a better title) that you can now see streaming on Netflix.
The title refers to a fictional website that works like chatroulette.com – a user signs up and logs in to be connected to other users randomly via webcam. Users can then chat face to face with complete strangers from around the world. Unfortunately it isn’t always face to face, sometimes it’s face to crotch, and The Den is shrewdly aware of this phenomena. The Den’s website (TheDen.com, which in real life actually takes you to the IGN website – weird) is filled with many racial stereotypes. It seems to be a misguided attempt at humor, but movies made after the 90s should be smarter than that. Thankfully it’s all in a pretty short montage near the beginning, so if you can overlook that, the rest of the film is worth watching. Still, The Den is light years away from being a great movie. It might feel pretty obvious and cliched to many viewers, but the tone switches about half way through into something that I think many of you will enjoy, even if you have seen it all before.
Elizabeth (played by Melanie Papalia – who was in the 2012 slasher/webcam film Smiley – do with that what you will) is a grad student who has just been given a grant to spend time on TheDen.com and report her findings about the way people behave online – you know, mostly normal things like being gross and flashing their naughty bits. It’s all obviously very academic and serious. Quickly after the stream of racial stereotypes and dick flapping (yeah, they show it) Elizabeth witnesses a murder of a young woman. Understandably, she’s a little disturbed by this, but there is still important research to be done. Such a dilemma! She asks her male friend for advice. He seems to think that it’s fake and probably just a prank where her reaction is recorded and it will most likely go viral on the internet. She can’t forget about it and the more digging she does, gets the attention of the bad guy, and pretty soon everyone she knows is a potential target for a masked serial killer.
I didn’t mention this up front, but The Den is a found footage film. But because it is made up entirely of webcam footage, it feels a little different than the average entry in the genre that fans are so tired of. The all webcam premise was done in Joe Swanberg’s “The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger” from the first VHS movie, but that film and the aforementioned Webcam are both short films. The Den is a whopping 81 minutes, which sounds short for a feature film, but the length is perfect for this material. I also mentioned a tonal shift – while the first half is all setup and mystery, the second half is a straight up slasher film with effective shots in dark hallways, gruesome violence and fast paced action. Some of it reminded me a little of the film Megan Is Missing, but that film is far superior and if you haven’t seen it yet, you must – only a word of warning – expect it to ruin your day completely.
The Den isn’t exactly sunshine and rainbows, but it isn’t humorless either. Some viewers will have fun watching it and will revel in its slasheresque rhythm, which let’s face it, is the same repetition and format as a porno. Others will be bored by a film that is clearly designed to be most effective when seen on a computer screen. For me, I enjoyed it, but I probably won’t remember it in a couple years. As far as the new releases on Netflix Instant go in the horror section, it’s one of the better ones. For what it’s worth, the comments on twitter have been overwhelmingly positive.