The Den is a film composed entirely of computer screen footage following a girl’s journey through the dark corners of the internet. She’s doing a study on the movie’s titular website, The Den, when she encounters a sadist who is just getting started with his new killing spree. The website is presented as a Chatroulette/Skype video chatting system. Apart from the site itself, you can see the full interactions of the girl’s desktop, as if you were sitting at her computer yourself.

While I liked this semi-new perspective, The Den fails to engage its audience. There wasn’t much to go on for a plot, which makes sense when you factor in the 76 min run time. When I see that a movie is as short as The Den it makes me think either the people who made it got bored halfway through and just gave up or they didn’t have enough creative material to make a feature length in the first place. It almost makes me feel like not giving their film a long review…

There are two or three random chat encounters (that end up being fake scares) that made me wonder what The Den would have been like if plotted out differently. In my vision for “The Den II: Dennier” I can see the girl jumping from chat to chat at a brisk pace. She comes across a kid hiding from a monster in his closet (a-la the first scene of The Den). At first, she thinks the kid’s death is a hoax. Slowly but surely, the terror builds as she realizes the grotesque murders and scary hauntings are real and the snuff is getting worse with each click! If you want to know what I have planned for the last third of the trilogy (“The Den III: Denniest”), I’ll have to get back to you. Until then, do yourself a favor and skip The Den. Go do something productive instead, like spanking your monkey on Chatroulette.

★★☆☆☆

2 Dennys’ out of 5