In the film set in Portland, Oregon, Diana Lane plays an FBI agent, Jennifer Marsh, who is expert with a computer and assigned to keeping tabs on cyber crime. There appears on the internet a site called killwithme.com. A wacko with, as we ultimately learn, a personal grudge, captures victims contacted via the internet and subjects them to horribly conceived deaths on camera. The more people click onto the site, the faster the victim dies. Needless to say, the public clicks on in the millions.

The film pushes the usual buttons and indulges in improbabilities. We are clued to worry about the safety of agent Marsh’s daughter and Marsh herself. There is an unlikely situation in which Marsh is left alone and vulnerable. We sense from the start what the finale must come down to.

But the premise of the film—that the internet is a dangerous place and that the public would watch executions if they were put on the internet (or on TV for that matter)—is jolting, more so because of the horror scenes the film asks us to watch.

Diane Lane is always an appealing and skillful actress, although the cinematography here doesn’t allow her to look her best, at least not on the preview print I saw. She goes a long way to making the film as involving as it is, and the supporting cast is fine too (Billy Burke, Colin Hanks, Joseph Cross, Mary Beth Hurt and Perla Haney-Jardine). The thriller has been tautly directed by Gregory Hoblit from a screenplay by Robert Fyvolent, Mark R. Brinker and Allison Burnett, based on a story by Fyvolent and Brinker.