Cyber Hell: Exposing an Internet Horror Confirms the Internet as the Scariest Place on Earth
In 2020, news of a vicious, far-reaching crime rocked South Korea; a crime with hundreds of victims, even more perpetrators, and dire effects and implications. This was also a deeply unusual case: It took place almost exclusively online. Directed by Choi Jin-seong, Netflix’s newest true-crime documentary Cyber Hell: Exposing an Internet Horror recounts these true events and the subsequent gruesome, nail-biting investigation.
The internet horror at hand all started in the so-called “Nth Room,” a private chat space on the messaging app Telegram. A mysterious figure called “Baksa” used Nth Room to phish personal information from mostly underaged women, dox them and then blackmail them into sharing sexually explicit content, which other anonymous members would then purchase using cryptocurrency.
Once Kim Wan, a journalist for the Korean newspaper The Hankyoreh, was tipped off to Baksa’s cruel acts via an anonymous email, he and his team began a mad scramble to expose Baksa and put an end to Nth Room once and for all. Also independently on the task were a group of student journalists, some anonymous hackers and cyber cops.
It is no secret that our society is infatuated with true crime stories. This is why streamers like Netflix produce new crime content fast enough to make your head spin. More often than not, the content is sanitized with an air of familiar, cliffhanger-esque excitement and seductive reenactments. Sometimes, it is even fully dramatized to maximize entertainment (see recent hits The Girl from Plainville and The Staircase). We enjoy these stories because they are both ugly and thrilling, nauseating and exciting. But it is hard to deny that true crime is difficult for many to stomach unless put through a numbing filter of overt TV structure or Colin Firth.
But Cyber Hell doesn’t have these filters, and it would be a disservice to its material if it did. This is not the kind of true-crime doc that audiences are used to. It’s dark, unflinching and deeply disturbing. A majority of it is spent with people plainly describing the torture a number of young girls underwent at the hands of a group of sadistic men. There are also recreations of victims getting sucked into phishing schemes on Telegram, with messages quickly popping up as if it’s all happening in real time—reminiscent of a slow-motion car-wreck that you can do nothing to stop. The tone reflects the content, and while this undoubtedly makes Cyber Hell an uncomfortable watch, it certainly makes an impact, too.