Recently I reviewed Unfriended and that’s how I learned about the existence of The Den. They are along the same vein in that they are both filmed through a computer screen/webcams, which is a type of found-footage film that I’ve found really intriguing lately.
The Den is about a young woman named Elizabeth who has just received a grant to study the webcam behaviours of people on a website much like Chatroulette, but instead it’s called The Den. She witnesses a murder of one of the users and everything just sort of snowballs from there. The actors involved were not well-known actors and that kind of added to the reality of the situation, I think. You’re not seeing an ACTOR interacting on a webcam site, you’re seeing a PERSON interacting on a webcam site.
I didn’t think it was phenomenal and the scares were a little cliche and expected. It starts off really strongly, building a very solid foundation, so I thought it was going to escalate into something more frightening than it ended up doing. It got kind of silly and took you out of the film in the end rather than shocking and horrifying as it probably intended to.
Luckily, my expectations were fairly low going into this movie, so when it was watched it could only exceed my expectations. There were just some silly plotholes and things that just didn’t add up – for instance, if your webcam was presumably being hacked, would you leave your laptop open at all times, even when asleep across the room? I highly doubt so. Anyway, it was okay for a fun watch you don’t think too much about. I’d probably rate it a 5 or 6 out of 10.
