The Den

Elizabeth, a sociology graduate student, launches a thesis project on The Den to measure how many meaningful conversations she can have with strangers online. With help from her friend Sally on the graduate board, she secures a reluctant grant and plans months of data collection. She begins cataloging chats and preparing her analysis.

Over the following weeks, she chats with dozens of strangers, but most conversations end quickly or lead nowhere. Nevertheless, she remains optimistic and collects a substantial amount of data for her study. Her goal is to quantify online sociability through The Den's interactions.

Suddenly, Elizabeth's Den account is hacked. Her webcam activates without her consent, and a hostile stranger begins contacting her repeatedly. The intrusions escalate, turning the platform into a personal nightmare.

One night, the hacked webcam secretly records Elizabeth and Damien having sex, and the video is leaked to her graduate board. The leak jeopardizes her funding and undermines her credibility. The incident intensifies the online harassment and attention on her thesis.

During a live stream on The Den, Elizabeth witnesses a masked man murder a young woman. The police initially suspect it to be a hoax, and Max struggles to trace the hacker through proxy routing. The incident confirms the platform can be deadly in real time.

Damien is abducted during a video chat, and Jenni is later lured to Elizabeth's house by a figure posing as Elizabeth. The threats shift from online harassment to real-world danger, endangering Elizabeth's friends. The attackers seem to have inside knowledge of Elizabeth's life and routines.

Jenni is found dead with fatal wrist wounds in an apparent staged suicide, and the leaked sex video causes Elizabeth's grant to be suspended. The loss deepens Elizabeth's isolation as her thesis crumbles under the surrounding chaos. Friends try to support, but fear and confusion mount.

The hacker then targets Elizabeth's pregnant sister Lynn, sending disturbing footage of intruders entering her home. Police surround the property, but the situation escalates when an attacker posing as a police officer retrieves the camera, implying insider access. The threat widens beyond Elizabeth to her family.

Elizabeth's friends are picked off one by one. She watches Max murdered on-screen, while Damien's fate remains uncertain. The mounting casualties sharpen the sense that no one is safe.

Returning home, Elizabeth finds her police protection compromised and kills a masked intruder hiding in her closet. She is then captured outside by another assailant. The immediate danger escalates as she loses control of her security.

Elizabeth wakes chained inside an abandoned building, a camera stapled to her forehead. She is forced to chat with Damien, who warns that their captors are part of a larger network. She watches a video of Max suffocated and sees Damien dragged away to his presumed death.

Elizabeth fights to escape, strangling one attacker and freeing herself from restraints. She flees through the dark complex armed with a hammer and confronts further danger as she navigates the maze underground. Her escape is messy and fraught with injury, but she keeps moving.

She interrogates a young captor, who admits Damien is not there. The revelation reframes the network's reach and suggests a larger conspiracy behind The Den.

The film shifts to Brianne, another Den user who earlier chatted with Elizabeth. Brianne receives a video showing Elizabeth being hanged and shot, revealed to be part of a black-market website selling snuff films staged as 'narratives' of victims hunted through The Den. A man browsing the site prepares to purchase Brianne's 'narrative' before being interrupted by his young son.