Metascore
32 out of 100

Generally unfavorable reviews - based on 30 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 30
  2. Negative: 13 out of 30
  1. 75
    A horrifying thriller, smart and tightly told, and merciless.
  2. Highly watchable, anchored sturdily by Lane's convincing performance.
  3. 70
    If Dick Wolf is interested in doing a "Law & Order: Cyber Crimes," he could do worse than to follow the lead of Untraceable, a diverting police procedural about an FBI unit tasked with sleuthing the Internet for mouse-wielding bad guys.
  4. Reviewed by: Joe Leydon
    70
    Unfolding like a better-than-average episode of a first-rate TV police procedural, Untraceable is a satisfying slice of solidly crafted meat-and-potatoes filmmaking.
  5. Reviewed by: Clark Collis
    67
    Lane skillfully sells the tech-heavy script. But after a much-too-early reveal of the murderer's identity, the ''low battery'' signal starts to flash on this film by thriller specialist Gregory Hoblit, director of last year's far superior "Fracture."
  6. I like the idea of a cybercrimes agent cracking cases through superior knowledge of the Internet. Marsh could be a great heroine for a continuing series. But Untraceable essentially forces its audience to identify with those who would be willing accomplices to torture and murder. To understate the point, that's not an audience-friendly approach.
  7. Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    50
    Even worse than its hypocrisy, gratuitous homophobia and cheap proselytizing, the movie is dull.
  8. 50
    The film, which has the ingredients for a thoughtful, tense thriller throws away a compelling first half so it can descend into silliness and clichés.
  9. Reviewed by: Kamal AL-Solaylee
    50
    While the punishments and triumphs are absolute, the entertainment value is highly equivocal. This ultimately relegates Untraceable to the ranks of so-so thrillers with legitimate but half-developed intellectual aspirations. And since you inspired the movie in the first place, part of the responsibility rests on, well, you.
  10. Reviewed by: Travis Nichols
    50
    A genuinely creepy film, though not in a "No Country for Old Men" kind of way. More in an overzealous-blog-comments kind of way, or a dude-on-the-bus-looking-at-me kind of way. Just ugh.
  11. Lane gives the film her best shot; she's pretty much the only reason to see it. There's an intelligence mixed with ferocity that makes her performance compelling, far-more-so than anything else in the film.
  12. 50
    Over and over again, Hoblit misses opportunities to make an engaging picture, instead giving us a merely pedestrian one.
  13. 50
    From its very first scene, Untraceable isn't the sophisticated, brainy thriller it so nearly could have been, but just another movie about a serial murderer.
  14. Yet another mediocre-to-lame thriller shot in Portland.
  15. 42
    Not only does Untraceable unmask its initially hidden killer with little ceremony, it's the sort of film that telegraphs every new development.
  16. 40
    Computer movies have come a long way since the good old days of monitors projecting vector graphics on hackers’ faces, but there are still some forehead slappers in Untraceable.
  17. Reviewed by: Ian Freer
    40
    A competent suspenser, helped by the always-dependable Diane Lane, but it suffers by following the modern thriller playbook to the letter.
  18. The latest, Untraceable, owes everything to “Lambs,” and to “Se7en,” and to all the “Lambs” and “Se7en” knockoffs made by directors less talented than Jonathan Demme and David Fincher. In addition to being dull, the Portland, Ore. -set Untraceable is a monster hypocrite, wagging its finger at the mass audience’s appetite for strictly regimented, “creative” torture scenarios.
  19. An abhorrent cyberthriller starring a compelling Diane Lane.
  20. Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    38
    A wan version of the same old tired serial killer story, despite its updated milieu -- cyberspace.
  21. 38
    It's a warmed-over suspense thriller that's more disturbing than it is surprising or scary.
  22. Reviewed by: Nathan Lee
    30
    Directed by Gregory Hoblit from a screenplay by a trio (a trio!) of whomevers, Untraceable hasn't the brains of a class-act psychothriller like "The Silence of the Lambs" (though it does reprise that film's titillating homophobia); worse yet, it lacks the balls to juice up the trashy verve of the "Saw" series.
  23. 25
    The movie chides us for being a sick voyeuristic society, hungry for the sight of violence. The purity of this moral stance is somewhat clouded by the movie's habit of staging sick violent acts.
  24. 20
    Tepid, borderline offensive cyber-serial killer thriller.
  25. You may view Untraceable, as I do, as a repugnant example of the voyeurism it pretends to condemn.
  26. 0
    Talk about your pious frauds. I've got a better way to show your disgust for Internet scum: Don't see Untraceable.
  27. As plain awful as Untraceable is, possibly the worst thing about it is that it pretends to mean something.
  28. Reviewed by: Richard Corliss
    0
    Untraceable really is disgraceable. It's bad enough when a movie offers up atrocity scenes that would make the Nanking soldiers seem like Hannah Montana; it's repellent when the movie dresses up the sadism in a moral message that condemns the very weakness it is exploiting.
  29. This joyless thriller runs the gamut from unconscionable through unwatchable to unendurable.
  30. 0
    By now the hypocrisy of simultaneously condemning and exploiting the audience's sadism has become so commonplace in American movies it hardly seems noteworthy.
User Score

Mixed or average reviews- based on 41 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 14 out of 25
  2. Negative: 9 out of 25
  1. FBI cybercrimes division, find dodgy website that kills a cat, then a man, then another one, etc, etc. The more people log on to watch, the quicker the victim dies.
    Run of the mill thriller, few flaws here and there but nothing too bad.
    Bit of a dig at society today at the end.
    Watch the Saw films, they're much better at this sort of thing.
    Full Review »
  2. justinm.
    10
    Thrilling, great acting.
  3. nchatanan.
    0
    Totally predictable, God bless America for making this kind of bullshit.