Many of the reviews of this movie seem to start with the phrase 'I like hacker films but ...' and then begins to refer to the fact that this film actually isn't any good. Having now watched it I'll have to agree with many of these reviewers, though there does happen to be a couple of shining aspects to it. Mind you, it is a pretty low budget film that is made up of no-name actors, but the thing is that when you are working with a low budget you probably should be expecting something extraordinary.

The story is about a hacker who is approached by some guy that wants evidence that his wife is cheating on him. While he is doing his research he discovers this program called Shepard which seems to be a tracking program. He decides to dig deeper, and discovers that there is a secretive agency behind it that starts kidnapping people who are involved in the hack.

I guess this film sort of plays on the idea of the security agencies that happen to be keeping records on everything that we happen to be doing online. Like, it isn't as if people don't know about it, but as the film suggests, people really don't care. In fact, the suggestion is that these agencies are no better than the lone hackers that are doing their best to gain access to our systems.

However, the film was pretty bland, and the ending was rather disappointing. Actually, it went beyond disappointing to somewhat confusing. I guess it sort of makes sense, because the more I think about it, the more I realise that going on afterwards probably wouldn't have added all that much to the film as it currently is.

One of the good things though is that they are quite a lot more accurate with computer technology than other films. For instance, they make a comment about how the whole 'zoom and enhance' really doesn't work, at least not the way that it does in many of the other films. It is also interesting some of the discussions about the suitability of passwords. Mind you, in the end, while it does try to be a little more authentic, as a film it doesn't really hold up all that well.

So, as others have pointed out, this is not a very good film. The concept is that a hacker in San Francisco stumbles upon a top secret tracking program built by defense industry contractors and it upends his life. It's not the worst idea for a film; as the Snowden leaks revealed, some of the conspiracy theories out there concerning big brother-ish government surveillance are a little less tinfoil hat than we used to think. But ultimately the film is weighed down by awful acting, stilted dialogue, and abundantly mediocre cinematography, to the point that watching the whole movie becomes more of an endurance test than a pleasurable experience.

The most notable thing about the movie is that the screenwriter took the time to research some coherent information about how hacking and related technologies work, although that said they still manage to get a large number of things wrong or only partially correct. So for instance they reference a security flaw present in many devices manufactured during a certain time range which, unfortunately, is all too real.But then the protagonist mentions that a mystery program was written in a proprietary programming language, which is possible, but very unlikely for quite a few reasons not worth going into here. And then the most important hack is completed by obtaining the username and password of the head of a government agency from just some guy he knows. I can't even begin to tell you how many layers of wrong that is.

But movies rarely get the technical details right, so all of those issues could probably be overlooked if they enabled an interesting story. Unfortunately, they don't. The acting is just so, so bad. And the ever present monotone voice narration is incredibly overused as a lazy exposition tool. Finally, the visual appeal is zero. Every scene feels like it was shot in someone's apartment building under harsh fluorescent lights.

The bottom line is that this just isn't a good movie and I wouldn't recommend wasting your time or money on it.

I'm a technogeek, computer nerd, and lover of techno thrillers. So I understood the themes and message of this film. But it was done so poorly that I don't know if I'm just disappointed or confused as to why the movie was even released.

About 30 minutes in, I started wondering if it was actually a cheesy parody of a "hacker" film. The dialog is poorly written and delivered with some of the worst acting I've ever seen. I felt like I was watching the product of a high school introductory film class.

The cinematography showed promise with some beautiful shots, but then degraded into very questionable angles and layouts. There's a scene where we get to stare at the back of the head of the main character for an oddly long period of time. I wondered why the director didn't have the cameraman just swing around to his front.

There were almost believable technical aspects of some scenes, but for a "hacker" movie with its overriding theme of "the NSA is watching everything", some of the technology in play should have been focused on more.

In light of the Snowden revelations, and some other stuff that was later revealed to have gone on in the past decade or two, the premise of this film could have resulted in a great product. It's really a shame that the movie was so badly written, poorly acted, and shot so oddly.