As Jennifer's pursuit of the evasive killer heats up, he eventually sets his sights on Jennifer herself, moving ever closer to her colleague Griffin Dowd (Colin Hanks, providing a bit of spark), and even her daughter. Following pretty much every cliché known to the serial-killer genre, Untraceable has Jennifer and her geeky sidekick track the killer with help from a local detective (Billy Burke), going from one advanced, hi-tech heated Internet conversation to another, spitting out phrases like "back door Trojans" and "floating IPs".

The story, written by Robert Fyvolent and Mark R. Brinker, is all pretty ho-hum 21st-century "cyber crimes unit" stuff, wandering from one cliché to the next - albeit with a outrageous amount of close-ups of bloody flayed flesh, skin broiling and scorching, eyes bugging in torment. Even Diane Lane’s brilliant acting can’t divert the conclusion that there aren’t enough layers of visual meanings for the plot to add up emotionally. In the end, "Untraceable" is one of Hoblit's weakest efforts, sleazy and absurd rather than clever and surprising.