*SPOILERS* (Just accept this is going to happen...)
The Den is a surprisingly disturbing movie about how humans used webcams to ruin other human’s lives.
This wouldn't be our first venture into the realm of torture/murder for profit. The sometimes true/often staged urban legends of snuff films have been in horror lore for some time. Vacancy did a rather good portrayal of this world at the location of a remote hotel. Hostel took the snuff to another level, where instead of the customer paying to view the murders, the commit the murders themselves. The Den takes this to yet another dimension, by including the psychological torture of the victim in the snuff.
Now don’t get me wrong, we have all heard that you can have you information stolen if you do not cover up your webcam with a little post-it note before you enter your credit card on the internet, but this is different. This film centers around a young lady who has decided to get her doctorate in voyeurism…or maybe it is reverse-voyeurism. Is that even a thing? Anyway, she is required to meet and document as many people as she can on this site called The Den. Seems like she found the grad school easy button right?
Well she, and all of you who don’t use your post-it notes properly, learned the hard way that allowing anyone into your life via the online medium can be a dangerous thing. It is especially dangerous when a group of mountain-dwelling gore-porn hillbillies pick you as their next target. She slowly finds her family and friends being attacking and kidnapped only to have a final brutal meeting with the killers herself. This part was awesome because for once she thoroughly and efficiently stabbed the killer. I check with my compatriot and even he said that was enough to take down most freakishly strong hillbilly serial killers!
As a demon, I tend not to startle often at jump scares and Sickle used to be the one who created the jump scares. Even though this is the case, something about the way the movie was shown entirely on webcams seems to make it more realistic, more prone to freaking you the hell out. The dark seems darker and the suspense seems to build to a perfect culmination of fear and alarm. It does it a lot better than most movies of a similar vein, reminiscent of Blair Witch in "a little is a lot".
One of the best parts is that this movie refuses to end when you think it should. “She got caught by the killer(s), surely she is dead…nope, but what is she doing on the set of Saw?” “Now she got into a car accident. She cannot possibly be alive still, I mean, why don’t they just… keep her alive for one final gore porn screen. Fair enough.” It may seem like I am being sarcastic, and it should because that is just normally how I sound. Despite my tone, the movie was a decent watch and I would suggest giving it a chance if you like voyeuristic horror films.