This was a potentially great, atmospheric thriller wasted by the scriptwriters' inanity and their ridiculous goofs regarding computers. I hate "realistic" movies that make such idiotic errors about computers and they always lose all their potential appeal in my eyes. The writers of this movie have no idea about anything computer-related, and they try to make computers one of the key points of the plot. They would probably mistake a typewriter and a TV set for a computer when faced with those. Their inanity can be seen best when the killer sends dr Hudson an e-mail with a video clip attached. The clip has its own icon and ACTS LIKE AN EXECUTABLE. It has its own code! Great Lord, does a concept of a program seem so bizarre to those Hollywood people that they cannot comprehend it? Of course, this "program-clip" is referred to as a virus, a generic Hollywood name for anything that is not from AOL or Microsoft, even though it is the precise opposite of a virus - not only does it not replicate, but it removes itself. In addition to this ridiculous, ill-informed, annoying idea, Dr Hudson uses a weird, non-operating OS that looks like a bizarre amalgam of X-Windows and CP/M (and Final III from the C64 :), but acts as neither. The pictures "download" and zoom in a strange, nonexistent way, the net access is ridiculously unrealistic... The killer manages to send totally anonymous e-mails and nobody even bothers to trace them - yeah, right. And how does Helen contact him later? She sends a mail "in the open". Just sends it. Without any recipient, without anything. And nevertheless, the killer gets it. Sigh. I would give the movie ten stars. For those computer-related idiocies, I take four stars back, and two stars more for Holly Hunter's annoying voice and the boring, cheaply artificial character of Daryll Lee Cullum, played by a wooden and unappealing actor whose name I won't even bother to remember. This leaves the movie with a final score of four stars. Oops. Tough luck, guys - hire better scriptwriters next time.
