The seemingly unbreachable anonymity bestowed on internet users makes the web the perfect arena for sadistic fruitcakes.

Almost certain they can never be discovered, every slimeball from paedophiles to date rapists can merrily go about their sordid business.

In Oregon, it's up to cybercrime cop Jennifer Marsh (Lane) to scour the net for these lowlifes from the keyboard of her computer at an FBI field office in Portland.

However, from among the credit card fraudsters and dirty iMac brigade there emerges somone new and terrifying.

He kicks off by frying kitten on camera (nasty but not a hanging offence) and then progresses to bleed a man to death as prurient visitors to his site become a frantic flurry.

And that's the catch - the more hits killwithme.com gets...the quicker the victim is intravenously fed an anti blood-clotting agent.

Marsh - who is also struggling to raise a child after she was widowed - discovers the site is impossible to close down as its IP constantly switches and is mirrored from somewhere in Russia.

There's also the problem that the killer keeps "throwing in backdoor Trojans" but we won't go into that now.

There's been a fair bit of liberal handwringing regarding director Gregory Hoblit's gorily grim thriller but it's a given that you have to check your moral compass in at the cloakroom with this type of fare.

Yes it's horrid - one poor sap blisters to death under a battery of infra-red lamps while another sizzles in a tank of battery acid - but what horror yarn worth its salt isn't?

The ever-reliable Lane lends proceedings gravitas even when events are telegraphed in neon letters 20ft high (you just know from the off that her geeky chum Colin Hanks is going to cop it).

But it's worth sticking with. It raises the unpalatable truth that the thousands of voyeurist geeks logging on to the site are, indeed, "accomplices to murder."

It's also pokes fun of a particularly dark hue at those emotionally stunted netheads who are enjoying a Second Life when they haven't even had a first one.

Tim Evans