The premise is fairly straightforward; Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane) and Griffin Dowd (Colin Hanks) are FBI Special Agents who regularly troll the internet taking out hackers, chat-room stalkers and various other cyber-criminals. One day, a website killwithme.com, comes across Agent Marsh's desk. On it is a kitten being tortured based on the number of viewers logged into the site. Marsh tries several things to shut down the site, but because of [**enter techie jargon here**], the site quickly cycles through tons of IP addresses and can be reached by its users almost immediately after being shut down. The site itself is hosted in Russia, so the FBI's jurisdiction is severely limited, but Marsh's boss doesn't take the threat too seriously at first since it's "just a kitten."
Her Director quickly eats his words though when a man appears on the site the next day. As the movie progresses, several people fall into the killer's hands and are displayed on the Internet for all to view and help kill. As the murders escalate, they involve everything from being boiled to death via heat lamps, to bleeding to death while anti-coagulants are pumped into the victim, and even a bath in battery acid. Needless to say, Marsh's team does everything they can to find a connection between the victims and tries to identify the killer. When Marsh herself starts being stalked, she finds her house being filmed on the site and, yes, her car gets hacked into via OnStar (which is theoretically possible since all he really does is shut down her car, a feature that comes with OnStar).
Special Features offer the usual fare. There is a commentary with the Director, Producer and Production Designer, as well as several featurettes that talk about the various characters, as well as how they planned out the murders.
Like I said at the beginning, the technology, for the most part, is plausible, and the criminal investigation aspects are pretty good. As a techno-thriller, the film does a fair job. Before watching it, I couldn't see how any tech-savvy person would be able to sit through this movie without feeling insulted, but for that part of the audience, you need not worry. And as far as viewers who could care less about the science behind it, and just want to see a good FBI mystery, it fits the bill there too.
