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“ | You're giving me my best numbers. | „ |
~ Owen Reilly |
“ | Hello. You know... I'm only doing to you what they're going to do to me. Only... they'll use potassium chloride, and they won't let very many people watch. But not for long. You see, soon... executions will be delivered live to our TVs ... our computers, our phones, our handhelds... and it won't cost much. Maybe ten bucks. Millions of eyes... all watching the same thing at the same time. One big, happy family. And all of it brought to you by... it doesn't matter. They'll have no trouble finding sponsors. | „ |
~ Owen Reilly |
Owen Reilly is the main antagonist of the crime thriller Untraceable. He is a serial killer and snuff filmer responsible for several tortures and murders, all for revenge over the suicide of his father, which was devoured by public consumerism it was when caught on camera.
He was portrayed by Joseph Cross.
Biography[]
Background[]
Owen's father, James Reilly, was a professor at Marshall Junior College in Oregon, working hard to support his loner, tech-prodigy son, whom he had with his unidentified wife, a hematologist. She died by unspecified means and circumstances, driving James into such severe grief, he walked onto Broadway bridge and shot himself dead sixteen months before the film's events, collapsing just after and falling off the bridge. Owen was traumatized beyond recovery by his parents' deaths, but the willing and consumerist publicity only made it worse. Traffic copter pilot Herbert Miller, filling in for an employee on sick day, caught the whole death on camera in full footage. He would later tell his friends he got lucky being there the moment it happened, and the footage was put on Channel 12, which immediately boosted its ratings after tough campaigns in the past. The story soon picked up and spread rapidly through public broadcasting. The back of James' skull and his glasses landed on a diner, where Scotty Hillman worked that day. Although the coroner took his skull, Hillman swiftly sold his glasses. Kids were dismissed early, and parents called for a rectification of the damages in horror and outrage, leaving to every broadcasting station offering their apologies. Except for Channel 12, feeding off the reactions they capitalized off, which led to them sending David Williams, their long-time reporter, to interview the businessman whose car James fell on when he was already dead. Channel 12 made another campaign for their ratings by showing the suicide film one last time to make sure any remaining viewers had a chance to see it.
Andrew Kilburn, a student at James' college, ripped the film from his TiVo, posting it on five different shock sites. With the publicity now becoming public access all over the Internet, around five million people viewed and downloaded the footage of James' death. Owen was scarred for life and resentful and begrudged over his father's shame. He became so traumatized, he was institutionalized for his mental illness derived from his own trauma and grief. He was released six months prior to the events of the film. Hoping for success in his own message, and to vindicate his father by getting revenge on the cultures and parties responsible for his unwarranted exploitation, Reilly set up high-end computer systems and software, designed fatal contraptions, and made his own website titled "KillWithMe.com". He plotted a serial killing and cyberterrorism spree, turning the men that most profited off and spread the suicide's publicity into his hit list. He retained his family's home in Fairview, Oregon, living alone and setting up his base there. His website was designed with a homepage graphic made off his father's skeleton's X-ray, numbers on it showing his date of birth and autopsy report number, all to toy with civilians and investigators alike, while adding to the terrorism for his own sadism and attempts at vengeance. Reilly started by murdering Kilburn by insulin restriction, leading to fatal diabetic ketoacidosis, which the coroner ruled a suicide. From there, Reilly starting setting the rest of his spree into motion, starting with an anonymous tip to Portland FBI Cybercrime to his site's URL as he prepared for his first live stream. He did this by leaking the URL in Kilburn's account while he started his first torture-murder, causing the site to spam instantly and rapidly.
Untraceable[]
Reilly abducts Hillman's kitten, Lulu, luring her out of the cage he put her in with a bowl of milk. All on live camera, he shined a light in her face and forced Lulu onto a mouse glue trap, livestreaming the torture of her trying to get out but only getting more stuck as she struggled. This scene is visible by the time FBI agents Jennifer Marsh and Griffin Dowd receive Reilly's anonymous tip of his URL. They can't track him or shut him down from his software bouncing theirs away and a mirror server restoring the site every time. Unfortunately, they're too late to save Lulu, as she gives out and is later seen dead on her belly from exhaustion. She's likely delivered to the doorstep of Hillman after she's dead as part of the crime spree and for the agents to find out. They track Hillman when they go off her special collar, Hillman as clueless to the motive as they are and just wanting her collar back. Reilly only escalates from there, luring Herbert Miller at a hockey arena two days later, promising an extra ticket. When Miller gets to Reilly's van, Reilly stuns and abducts Miller.
The next day, Miller's broadcast live, being torture to death by bloody flesh cuts of the URL in his chest and an IV drip filled with anticoagulants, which decrease his blood clotting. The agents seeing the viewers go up as Miller bleeds more, realizing he's dying more as timed with the increase of an online audience. Miller's a lost cause as well, as the agents watch live with the rest of the audience as Miller succumbs to bleeding and bruising to death. His corpse's then left in the trunk of a car in the parking lot of congressman Joseph A. Rotman, a substantial donor to Channel 12. David Williams is the next victim on the list, lured by Reilly to a home for sale and a new car as part f the deal. After enough chats and having Williams walk down into the basement, Reilly tases him too, sending Williams tumbling down the stairs. The next stream shows Williams bound by his arms and waist deep in solidified concrete, the torture this time by heat lamps turning on and being more fully activated by each and every bulb to increase the hit and incinerate Williams alive. In his dying breath, Williams musters out the address, which the agents read his lips from, but they're too late, as Reilly's already escaped, leaving looping footage of a press conference warning of the website and taking Williams' corpse cut off by the stumps in the concrete with him.
Knowing the agents are on his trail, having already taunted them with traces of information coming back to themselves to frustrate them, he streams a new video. This time, it's outside Marsh's house. After marsh knocks the camera off with her gun drawn, she finds Williams' broken, rotting corpse in the trunk. Reilly than closes the chats with that he would never kill Marsh's young daughter, what with her being a child. Knowing they're closing in, and wanting more attention to his message, Reilly lures Dowd with a phone call posing as one of his dates after an actual rocky exchange between the two earlier. Dowd's abducted as well, to the outright horror of the entire unit and their superiors. Reilly simply sits there and taunts Dowd over how much the audience wants him to die, remarking they especially his badge Reilly aggressively pinned to the skin on his chest, seeing if it attracts more digital consumers by watching a cop be killed live. It works: Dowd's dissolved from his neck up in water which fills with sulfuric acid, the most rapid of all the tortures so far. In his last moments, a cryptologist colleague on site is rushed in by Marsh to decode Dowd's blinking. It's Morse code, one eye being dots, the other dashes. It spells out "our suicide", just before his eyes roll back and he dies from his body from the neck down dissolved to his bones. The unit is devastated, and they soon find his corpse later when they trace the house.
Going through Dowd's files, Marsh and Portland detective Eric Box, who's been tailing and collaborating in the investigation, find the video of Reilly's father's suicide, as well as Kilburn's account and "suicide" report. Finally seeing the connections from the info on the site and the victims, she puts the pieces together and presents everything about the case's motives to the team, especially revealing Reilly as The Internet Killer and the allusions that Reilly left as bread crumbs. Going out to the site of the suicide alone, knowing there's a crucial piece she's missing, her transmission's cut off from Reilly hacking her car. He goes on and talks about the public response and selling of the video of Jacob's suicide. He then rises up from the backseat of the car and tases and abducts Marsh. Tying her over a cultivator and flatly going on about the industrializing of snuffs, he livestreams her head over the whirring blades so the increase in views can lower her closer down. Box immediately recognizes her basement and rushes over with SWAT. But Marsh is covered, as she swings herself on the rope, with Reilly filming, enough to grab onto a nearby heating pipe. When Reilly puts the camera down to knock her loose, she twists the knob and sprays Reilly with scalding steam, and in an ensuing struggle, she breaks from where she's suspended without landing on the cultivator. At the peak of the fight, and as Box and responders breach her house, Reilly tries to make one final move at Marsh, but grabbing her gun just in time, she shoots Reilly several times, killing him. Holding her badge up to the camera as a way of saying the site will be taken down, various commenting users mourn Reilly, celebrate Reilly, and applaud Marsh, with the last one before the movie ends asking to download the video.
Personality[]
Before the death of his father, Owen Reilly was a lonely but intelligent boy good with computer and technology. But after this tragic event, he took a dramatic turn. He became a particulary ruthless serial killer killing in very painful and gruesome ways, the FBI agent Griffin being dissolved in acid is an example. He is also sadistic, enjoying to see his victims suffer. His intelligence is demonstrated many times, as he is able to fool the FBI into sending to the wrong place and to study his victims to lure them more easily.
Despite all of his bad actions, all of this comes from the resentment he has towards the media accusing them of publishing online his father's death just for sensationalism. This makes him somewhat tragic. Reilly has standards he will not cross, as he clearly states he will not harm a young child.
Quotes[]
“ | Hello, Jennifer. Look out the front window. Under that streetlight. That's where my father's body fell over the railing. Some websites show the whole thing in slow motion... because it's just so much better that way. One archives it in a section called "whoa." That's it. Just "whoa." You and the people you work with... you let people say and do almost anything they want. It doesn't matter who it hurts. | „ |
~ Owen Reilly |
“ | I wonder if they'll kill you faster or slower. Based on what I've seen online... the awful things that men do to women that other men pay to watch... my guess would be faster. Much faster. | „ |
~ Owen Reilly |
“ | Did you really think I would let you people hurt that little girl? | „ |
~ Owen Reilly |
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- James Reilly's suicide appears starkly similar to the suicide of Daniel V. Jones, who killed himself by gunshot in a police standoff over a freeway, which was broadcast live across America from news cameras even from helicopters and even viewed by children because the broadcast interrupted their scheduled cartoon programming.