The Den (2013 film)

The Den (also released as *Hacked*) is a 2013 American found footage horror film and the feature directorial debut of Zachary Donohue. Melanie Papalia stars as a graduate student whose research on an online chat platform leads her to become the target of a murder network that broadcasts killings on a black-market website. The movie examines social media, hacking, voyeurism, the deep web, and snuff-film-style violence.

**Plot** Sociology student Elizabeth Benton uses the social media site The Den for her thesis, hoping to measure how many meaningful conversations she can have with strangers. Despite concerns from her boyfriend Damien and friends Jenni and Max, she secures a reluctant grant with help from friend Sally and spends months chatting. After her account is hacked, her webcam activates without permission, and a hostile stranger repeatedly contacts her. A video of her and Damien having sex is leaked to her graduate board. She then witnesses a masked man murder a young woman live on The Den; police dismiss it as a hoax, and Max fails to trace the hacker due to proxy routing. Damien is abducted during a video chat, and Jenni is lured to Elizabeth’s house by someone posing as her, later found with fatal wrist wounds in an apparent staged suicide. The leaked sex video gets Elizabeth’s grant suspended. The hacker targets her pregnant sister Lynn, sending footage of intruders entering her home. Police surround the property, but an attacker posing as an officer retrieves the camera, suggesting inside knowledge or infiltration of law enforcement. Elizabeth watches Max murdered on-screen; Damien’s fate remains unclear. Returning home, she finds her police protection compromised, kills a masked intruder in her closet, but is captured outside. She wakes chained in an abandoned building with a camera stapled to her forehead. Forced to chat with Damien, she learns their captors are part of a larger network. After watching Max suffocated and seeing Damien dragged away, she strangles an attacker with her chain, escapes, and flees with a hammer. She interrogates a young captor, who says Damien isn’t there. She hijacks a getaway car but crashes after being rammed; the killers drag her back underground. The film shifts to Brianne, another Den user who earlier chatted with Elizabeth.