Cyber Hell: Exposing an Internet Horror

Closed rooms are opened on a messaging app. You pay to get in. Images of women and children are shared inside; all of it obtained by threat. The method is this: a false job advertisement goes up, the person is asked for identification and photographs, and the blackmail starts from those photographs. There are thousands of people in the rooms. Two university students notice and start keeping records. A journalist follows the same trail. The police understand the size of it late. Who was running the rooms stays unknown for a long time. Choi Jin-sung directs. Journalists, police officers and the students who uncovered it speak in the documentary. It is a South Korean production and went out on Netflix. Its subject is real; the case is well known in Korea, drew a large public reaction and led to changes in the law. The narrative does not use images of the victims and does not show the material. The matter it treats is anonymity; the system ran for years because the perpetrators could hide. The documentary stresses the number of people using the rooms; the crime was the work not of a few but of a crowd. The narrative brings forward the part played by journalism and by volunteer tracking. The film uses reconstruction and screen capture, which speeds the narrative. Its limit is the watching; the subject is heavy, what is described is shattering, and the film gives no relief. Who it is for: viewers who like investigative documentary and narratives of digital crime. Who it is not for: it is shattering, heavy, and the ending leaves anger.