I'm not biased to found-footage horror films. Even some of the more out-there ones, like 'Creep' I have enjoyed and appreciated, and I was hoping for a similar film in 'The Den'. While it starts off with an interesting premise, it quickly becomes too unrealistic, and in the end, I turned it off 20 minutes before what I'm sure was a terrible conclusion.
The plot centers around a young grad student who's gotten a grant to study something along the lines of online communication through a web site called 'The Den', where you can video chat with anyone, anywhere in the world. Things turn nasty for her though, when she witnesses a murder during one of these subsequent chats, and soon her loved ones are picked off one by one as she is hunted by this elusive killer.
Despite the low budget, and the fact that the film takes place entirely in a 'Face-Time' like format, I thought the first 1/3 of 'The Den' was pretty creepy, and gave good credence to what I imagine dark internet activity to look like. But when the killer begins to take down her family members and hunt her, it becomes unrealistic, and therefor boring. A more interesting plot IMO would have been centered around a police investigation after the aforementioned murder witnessed by the grad. student. Because these things do happen online, but rarely do these killers become so reckless that they then begin to hunt down others on the same chat. IDK, perhaps I'm cynical and have read too much true-crime books, but I just don't like run- of-the-mill slasher movies, which is what 'The Den' is, only it's packaged in a way to feed on the technological paranoia of millennials.
Like I mentioned before, I did not watch The Den through till the end. It started to seem like too much of a waste of time, so perhaps I missed out on something that would have completely redeemed the film, but I'm betting that I didn't.
The plot centers around a young grad student who's gotten a grant to study something along the lines of online communication through a web site called 'The Den', where you can video chat with anyone, anywhere in the world. Things turn nasty for her though, when she witnesses a murder during one of these subsequent chats, and soon her loved ones are picked off one by one as she is hunted by this elusive killer.
Despite the low budget, and the fact that the film takes place entirely in a 'Face-Time' like format, I thought the first 1/3 of 'The Den' was pretty creepy, and gave good credence to what I imagine dark internet activity to look like. But when the killer begins to take down her family members and hunt her, it becomes unrealistic, and therefor boring. A more interesting plot IMO would have been centered around a police investigation after the aforementioned murder witnessed by the grad. student. Because these things do happen online, but rarely do these killers become so reckless that they then begin to hunt down others on the same chat. IDK, perhaps I'm cynical and have read too much true-crime books, but I just don't like run- of-the-mill slasher movies, which is what 'The Den' is, only it's packaged in a way to feed on the technological paranoia of millennials.
Like I mentioned before, I did not watch The Den through till the end. It started to seem like too much of a waste of time, so perhaps I missed out on something that would have completely redeemed the film, but I'm betting that I didn't.