Diane Lane stars as FBI Special Agent Jennifer Marsh in Untraceable.

sony pictures

Diane Lane plays a special unit FBI agent trying to track a psychopath who tortures people and animals to death in the most gruesome ways for the entertainment of Internet viewers in the kinky chiller Untraceable.

Untraceable has elements of the Saw movies (although not quite as grisly) and even recalls the final terrifying woman-in-peril sequence from Silence of the Lambs. It has moments that are creepily chilling, especially as the insane torturer sets up — or appears to be setting up — his next victim. And it has a strong cast, led by Lane, that sucks us into the film’s increasing sense of dread.

Director Gregory Hoblit has been playing creepy mind games on audiences since 1996’s Primal Fear, which put Edward Norton on the map with an Oscar nomination, and most recently in the twisty thriller Fracture, starring Anthony Hopkins and Billy Burke, who plays a Portland, Ore., police detective in Untraceable.

So the pedigree is solid, even though without all those grisly torture sequences, the movie would otherwise play like a pretty good TV movie, right down to the inevitable conclusion as the killer gets closer to Lane’s friends and family. Still, there are some surprises along the way, including a moment when the movie appears nearly over, only it’s not.

The torture scenes, including ones that involve a kitten and a man slowly being bled to death, are posted on the killer’s intricately untraceable web site that’s watched by millions. In fact, the number of viewers is key to a victim’s death on the “Kill With Me” site. “The more they watch, the faster he dies,” is the killer’s mantra.

Yet there is one key part of Untraceable that is unsettling. The movie seems to decry the inhumanity of man by pointing out that the number of Web browsers clicking onto the site to see real-time murders explodes with each new murder, a phenomenon that’s akin to slowing down to a crawl to catch a good look at a roadside accident. Yet we in the audience are basically doing the same thing by watching, no matter that we might like to think we are reluctant witnesses. Yet, no matter how grisly the sight on the screen, there’s no denying that it’s pretty gripping. It’s hard to turn one’s eyes away. So there’s the “ick factor” to deal with in Untraceable, which gets under your skin, ready or not.

Lane, a long way from the sexy romantic she played so well in Under the Tuscan Sun, here in rain-drenched Portland ratchets up the tension as the killer gets closer and closer to her. Colin Hanks (Tom’s son) makes a very appealing and likable sidekick for her. Joseph Cross, with his choirboy face, is unnervingly creepy as the psycho. And young Perla Haney-Jardine, as Jennifer’s naïve daughter, gets to set up the film’s biggest seat-gripping moment.

***Untraceable

Starring: Diane Lane, Billy Burke, Colin Hanks, Mary Beth Hurt, Perla Haney-Jardine.

Rated: R, contains gruesome violence, profanity.

mjanuson@projo.com