[2][3] The film is shot in screenlife and found footage style and was first released in Russia as смерть в сети, Death Online on December 23, 2013.

Elizabeth Benton logs into a social media site known as The Den, which allows users to chat with random strangers.

For her graduate project in sociology, she proposes to chat with as many strangers as possible and calculate how many meaningful conversations she can accumulate.

Elizabeth spends the next few months continuously chatting, much to the chagrin of her boyfriend, Damien, and friends Jenni and Max.

The stranger attempts to chat with Elizabeth again the next day while she is in a coffee shop, but logs off quickly when another customer approaches the webcam.

Elizabeth later stumbles upon a disturbingly realistic depiction of a death during a game of Russian roulette, which turns out to be faked.

When she enlists Max to hack the account and to see where it originated, he finds that it has been routed through countless proxies, making it untraceable.

Seeing water flooding from the bathroom, Elizabeth enters to find Jenni in the bathtub, her wrists slashed in an apparent suicide attempt.

The attackers bind Lynn and prepare to cut open her stomach, but then abruptly leave, hiding the camera as they do so.

The film cuts to another woman, Brianne, on The Den who chatted with Elizabeth at the start of the project.

Brianne then views a recording of Elizabeth being hanged almost to death and then shot in the head by the killers.

The website features snuff film "narratives" of victims lured by killers exploiting The Den.

[8] Fearnet gave The Den a positive review, commenting that it "starts out a little rocky but if you're not completely fed up with 'found footage' filmmaking by now and you're willing to give a non-traditional visual presentation a fair shot, The Den has some pretty compelling things to say about the alleged safety of the internet.

"[9] In contrast, Shock Till You Drop panned the movie as it felt that it "lacks true scares, awesome kills or even the routine flash of nudity to warrant any sort of viewing.

It panders a silly and over exaggerated message of the dangers of the anonymity of the internet and the "nature" of people.

It uses a silly plot to carry a ridiculous camera technique and delivers nothing but angst and irritation.