The Den

The Den

Director Zachary Donahue is brave. The Den is a found-footage film (of sorts) told through the medium of a webcam, hacked cameras and screens. Considering it is an unusual way to film and frame a film, it gives the audience a knowing geography, causing nervousness whenever a camera is live – which is the entire film.

There is also the social commentary of the horrific nature of the internet, the seediest shadows that seep into the majority, with a final moment that breaks away from the visual style to reveal two scary realisations of the film that preceded it.

Perhaps it becomes too much in the third act, the setting stretching it too far from the normality. There is still plenty of fear in the act, the nature of the visual style either feels voyeuristic or it is from the audience’s POV. The Den is a clever, on-the-nose look at the internet, our implicit trust in it and the feeling of not being able to escape, using our commonplace technology to instil the terror that someone is always watching.