The Horror Show
The Den
by Zachary Donohue
Let’s face it, I’m a bit jaded when it comes to horror movies having any kind of real terror grip on me. Sure, there are movies that every now and again will give me the willies. A spooky ghost here and there, a terrifyingly fast zombie running full speed at its prey, a 6 foot tall killer lurking in the shadows of your peaceful summer camp…
But The Den truly disturbed me. In fact, bits and pieces of The Den horrified me.
It begins as any other “found footage” film begins. Back and forth chit chat between the characters to build small, and most of the time, meaningless relationships. The Den tells its story in the form of webcams, Skype, Facetime, etc. The world of technology is a prominent factor in this movie, one that I know very well since it’s what I do for a living.
Elizabeth (played by Melanie Papalia) is working on her thesis and finally gets awarded a grant that will allow her to do nothing for one year but communicate with as many people as she can via social media site “The Den.” Elizabeth will record everything, and I mean everything. From the vast internet, there are an infinite number of crazy characters that Elizabeth has the chance to interact with in this “Chatroulette” style social media platform. Initially, the movie starts off a bit raw; there’s some blatant over-acting and forced drama between Elizabeth and her disgruntled boyfriend, who is not happy with the fact that he never gets to see her anymore. Elizabeth’s friends and family are also not super pleased with her choice to spend an entire year recording everything and everyone she interacts with on the site, but they deal with it, embracing her desire to accomplish her goals.
You have to be patient with this film. I warn you, it’s very boring in the beginning as our main character wets her feet on the chat site and we are forced to sit through the typical sexual voyeurs, the outright creeps, the teenage punks playing practical jokes; we’re exposed to the whole nine yards. But I promise you, if you give the film a chance, you won’t be disappointed.
One afternoon, while on the site, Elizabeth comes across a girl’s profile with just her smiling profile photo, no video feed. Elizabeth innocently asks “Is your webcam broken?” and we are suddenly thrust into a nightmarish live-feed of the girl in the photo gagged and bound to a chair in a dark room, she’s screaming for her life, absolutely terrified. Suddenly, a masked man appears on camera and slits her throat. Elizabeth is shocked at the sudden display of violence, she doesn’t know if what she just watched is real, or simply another sick, practical joke. She calls the police and they take her report, but they shrug it off, reassuring her that people on the internet have nothing better to do, and she shouldn’t be concerned that the “murder” was even a murder at all.
This is when things get interesting. And by interesting, I mean awful for every single person in this film.
Elizabeth, a character that initially annoyed the hell out of me, was the heroine I was rooting for right until the credits took over the screen. She is so dedicated to finding out who is behind all these disgusting occurrences that seem to be intended just for her, and no one believes her. Even when her boyfriend disappears (gets kidnapped) the police think Elizabeth is overreacting.
It’s very clear soon after the first live-feed “murder” that Elizabeth is a target. And it’s also very clear soon after that things may not end well for our leading lady.
The thing that terrified me so much about this film is that I truly believe things like this occur on a daily basis. Call me a conspiracy theorist or call me paranoid, but snuff porn is alive and well in the world. The Den was a neatly boxed found footage film that took ideas from Eli Roth’s “Hostel” and combined them with the realism of the horrors of humanity’s most prized possession: the internet.
This is what people do. They spend all of their time on their cell phones, their computers- constantly connected to the world, to friends, family, strangers, and unbeknownst to so many of us, to absolute psychopaths. Regardless of whether or not the film was original, or if the acting was phenomenal, or if somebody would actually spend an entire year on the internet in order to write a thesis…the simple fact is that the tension in this film is high. Can we discuss this mask that the killer(s) wear? If a sack of potatoes mated with Satan, the mask from this film was born from that horrid copulation.
In closing, the scares are there, the gore is there, the suspense and satisfaction is there. I really do suggest this film to any horror fan, found footage fanatic or not. Just as the film “Catfish” taught us that online relationships are often founded in the lies of a mentally unstable internet stranger, The Den teaches us that the world is a gruesome place; it always has been, and it always will be. The internet has simply made it easier for the sick and twisted to satisfy their dark, and often times dangerous, fetishes.
Stevie Kopas, HMS
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