Usually on game night, the stakes aren’t too high: bragging rights. Wounded pride. But it’s all in good fun.
Not tonight.
Twentysomething Matias O’Brien and five of his good friends—Nari and Serena (who announce their engagement during the evening), along with Lexx (a DJ), Damon (who lives in England) and Aj (the group’s resident conspiracy theorist and tech expert) have rendezvoused digitally via Skype for their regular evening of online gaming fun together. Tonight’s game: Cards Against Humanity.
When Matias isn’t Skyping with his friends, he’s trying to coax his deaf girlfriend, Amaya, to join, too. But Amaya’s not really interested. In fact, she’s not even sure she wants to head any further down the romantic path with Matias, whom she increasingly believes can never really know her because of her hearing impairment.
So when he’s not joking around with his friends, Matias is Facebook video messaging with Amaya, hoping to show her the new program he’s been working on that helps him communicate more effectively in American Sign Language.
Suffice it to say that Matias isn’t fully present in either place.
That’s when his new laptop, which he tells his friends he bought off Craigslist, begins acting up. When he checks the computer’s memory, he sees that 98% of it is taken up with mysterious files that look well protected.
What kind of laptop is this?
On top of that, someone named Norah C. IV keeps Facebook messaging him as well. Her messages—if it actually is a her—get increasingly blunt. And profane. Threatening, even. Norah wants her laptop back.
And if not? Bad things are going to happen. Things related to the hidden files that Matias has been so curious about. The very files that he’s just managed to crack open and show to his friends.
Those files lead them to the Dark Web, a secretive, unindexed partition of the Internet where ne’er-do-wells lurk and their transactions can’t be easily tracked.
Matias and his friends don’t realize it just yet, but the stakes for their game night together just got a lot more serious.
Matias, to his credit, loves Amaya. And he’s committed to making his relationship with her work, despite the fact that his command of sign language is minimal at best. But he’s genuinely trying in that department.
Once it’s clear that Amaya, especially, is in mortal danger because of the Pandora’s box Matias has unwittingly opened on his computer, he’s frantic to keep her out of harm’s way. Likewise, as soon as the very real peril these friends are in becomes apparent, they valiantly try to help each other survive the horror they’ve unleashed.
Matias and his friends happen into a Dark Web virtual community populated by members who all go by variants of the name Charon, the ferryman who shuttles the dead across the rivers Styx and Acheron in Greek mythology. We watch as they look up information on Charon to try to figure out who these shadowy people are.
Nari and Serena are a lesbian couple who’ve just gotten engaged. A tearful conversation between them revolves around the fact that Nari’s parents don’t approve of their relationship and won’t be supportive of it.
Serena wears a cleavage-revealing shirt. We see some pictures of women on Facebook posing provocatively. Conversation crudely references both the male and female anatomy a couple of times, and somebody jokes about having sex on top of pizza. We see some suggestive written messages on Facebook messenger. There’s a verbal allusion to oral sex.
People make fun of Aj’s real name, Alister Jeffcock. We also hear a couple of verbal references to Aj’s online porn habits, and it’s clear that he knows a lot about hiding digital evidence of what he’s been looking at on the Web.
Matias and his friends quickly realize that the hidden files on his computer include deeply disturbing evidence of unspeakable crimes, almost all of which have apparently been committed against young women.
[Spoiler Warning] We see videos that picture an unconscious woman about to have acid dumped over her, another who’s trapped in a steel barrel, and another who’s apparently about to be kidnapped from her bedroom. There’s chilling evidence that at least one woman has had a hole drilled in her head, and something put inside her skull—though without killing her. A long list of computer files implies that at least one person—perhaps more—has been kidnapping and torturing women, videoing that activity to sell to customers on the Dark Web. We don’t really see very much of what’s implied here, but those implications are truly stomach churning. In one case, we see a young woman chained up in a warehouse, desperately trying to escape.
A number of people die before the credits roll. We see someone shoved off a roof, another person who’s hit by a train (along with one other victim in that scene) and a guy who’s run over by a truck while riding his bike. One victim gets gunned down in a hail of bullets. Someone has a bag placed over her head. Another victim dies by hanging, flailing wildly until his last breath. Other deaths are implied by screams, thumps, muffled voices and the sound of cracking bones. Someone in a hospital has her life support turned off, killing her. We see more than one unconscious (or perhaps dead) person being carried around in black plastic garbage bags.
Profanities are both spoken and frequently spelled out in various messages on computer screens throughout the film. There are about 10 f-words (including one pairing with “mother”) and a dozen s-words. God’s name is misused nearly 15 times, including three pairings with “d–n.” Jesus’ name is abused at least four times. We hear three crude references to the male and female anatomy. A handful of other vulgarities include “h—,” “a–hole,” “a–hat,” “d–n” and “crap.”
Aj says everyone should come over to his house so that they can enjoy some “killer bud” together. Someone jokes about cocaine.
For various reasons, Matias doesn’t always tell his friends the truth about what’s going on—starting, initially, with the fact that he stole the mysterious laptop he’s using from “lost and found” at the cybercafé where he works. It’s a decision that ends up having enormous repurcussions for him and his friends. Other lies and evasions sprinkle the plot, too.
A plot point involves essentially stealing someone’s Bitcoin stash, which is worth nearly $11 million.
[Spoiler Warning] In the end, it’s chillingly implied that thousands of people on the Dark Web are willing to pay for—and watch in real time—the carefully choreographed abduction, torture and murder of innocents who have no idea that they have been surveiled electronically because they were careless about their internet security.
Be careful.
As a parent, that’s an admonition I’ve given my children thousands of times. Why? Because I don’t want them to hurt themselves (or someone else) inadvertently because they failed to heed my counsel.
Matias isn’t careful. He makes a selfish, greedy choice. He lies. And then the whopper: letting his curiosity get the best him with regard to finding out what’s in those secret files.
Matias’ carelessness comes with a price. Some mistakes you only make one time, a lesson about being careful that he learns only too late.
As for the movie’s message, surprisingly, Dark Web delivers a deeply creepy cautionary warning—albeit in the trappings of a relatively restrained R-rated horror movie. It too says: Be careful. There are bad people out there. They do bad things. So don’t exposure yourself to them foolishly—namely when it comes to the risky things you might be tempted to explore online.
That’s an unexpectedly wise message in a movie that showcases the fatally awful consequences of not acting wisely. Then again, I think being careful about media discernment—in all of its many screened forms in the 21st century—means recognizing that we don’t need to sit through a horror movie to internalize that message.
So be careful.
After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.
