Skip to main content

Dying On Film: 5 Movies About Snuff Movies

The recent direct-to-DVD horror Terror Trap tells of a couple who discover the isolated motel they are stranded at is used as a studio to produce snuff movies - films that purportedly depict actual homicide. The staff at the motel are all involved, and the residents of the small rural town the motel stands outside, are also aware of the films being produced there and, chillingly, turn a blind eye. While writing a review of Terror Trap, I began to think about other films that revolve around the idea of snuff movies...

Mute Witness (1994). A deliriously taut exercise in sustained tension and suspense, Mute Witness stars Marina Zudina as Billy, a special effects make-up artist working on a low budget slasher movie in deepest, darkest Moscow. Staying late at the creepy, crumbling studio one night, Billy witnesses the filming of a snuff movie and is relentlessly pursued around the sprawling studio buildings by the filmmakers. Billy is mute, and therefore can't simply call for help or alert anyone to her whereabouts. When the police are convinced Billy only witnessed an elaborate special effects sequence being shot, the killers close in, sparking a deliciously thrilling and prolonged game of cat and mouse that builds to a shocking climax. 

My Little Eye (2002). A barbed critique of contemporary society’s obsession with ‘reality TV’, and a tightly wound, slow-burning chiller, My Little Eye is an effective shocker that explores themes of voyeurism, paranoia and the risks of vainglory. A group of strangers audition for a Big Brother style web-series in which they stay at a remote house in the middle of snowbound-nowhere. Their every move is recorded by myriad CCTV cameras throughout the house. Events take a turn for the sinister when the group realise the site they’re being broadcast on is a snuff site… Bloody murders, paranoia and bleak denouements ensue.

Vacancy
Vacancy (2007). The premise of Terror Trap sounds a lot like that of Nimród Antal’s gritty survival horror, Vacancy. A young married couple are stranded at an isolated motel and after the discovery of hidden video cameras in their room, they realize – to their horror - that unless they escape, they are set to become the reluctant stars of a snuff film. Also like Terror Trap, this begins with slow-burning tension as Antal piles on the dank suspense and panicky feeling of helplessness before letting loose with the shocks. The briefly glimpsed snuff movies in this one are bleak, despairing and surprisingly disturbing for such a mainstream Hollywood horror.

Tesis (1996). The debut feature of Alejandro Amenábar, director of Open Your Eyes and The Others, Tesis (Thesis) tells of Ángela (Ana Torrent), a film student who inadvertently watches a real snuff movie while researching her thesis on violence in cinema. She is soon drawn into a disturbing world of violence, snuff film production and shadowy institutional cover-ups. Taking an intelligent and highly reflexive approach to its subject matter – the effects of cinematic violence on audiences – Tesis is also a tension-fuelled thriller. It inspired the Nicolas Cage-starring, Andrew Kevin Walker-scripted 8MM.

Peeping Tom
Peeping Tom (1960). Critically panned on its release, this film derailed the career of its director, Michael Powell. It was only years later that Peeping Tom was given a critical reappraisal and justly lauded. Unfolding as a Hitchcockian thriller in which a disturbed young man murders various women and films their terrified reactions, Peeping Tom also serves as a disarming investigation of the voyeuristic nature of film audiences and their fascination with fear. Placing the audience firmly in the place of the killer (he uses a spiked tripod leg on the end of a film camera to kill his victims while he films them), Peeping Tom had an overwhelming influence on the slasher film; in which the viewer is implicated in the onscreen murders through incriminating point of view camera work.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

The Ash Tree

1975 Dir. Lawrence Gordon Clark Part of the BBC’s annual series A Ghost Story for Christmas , which ran from 1971 to 1978 and featured some of the small screen’s most chilling moments, The Ash Tree was the last of several MR James adaptations directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark. Written for television by David Rudkin, It stars Edward Petherbridge in the dual role of Sir Richard, an 18th century aristocrat who inherits the vast estate of his late uncle, and of Sir Matthew, his 17th century ancestor whose role in local witch trials, and the death of Ann Mothersole (Barbara Ewing), haunts Sir Richard.  With a slim running time (just over 30 minutes) The Ash Tree is one of the shortest entries in the series, but it is also one of the densest. The amount of detail and information packed in, without compromising or diluting the impact of the source material, is admirable. Clarke manages to convey events and flashbacks by utilising an interesting narrative structure and some ...
Read more

Mandrake (2022)

Mandrake tells of probation officer Cathy Madden (Deirdre Mullins), who is assigned to help with the rehabilitation of recently released ‘Bloody’ Mary Laidlaw (Derbhle Crotty), who had been incarcerated years prior for the murder of her abusive husband. Rumours have long swirled in the local area concerning Mary’s dabbling in witchcraft and involvement in cases of missing children. No sooner has she been released, than the bodies of several local children are found in the woods near her farmhouse. As Cathy and local police delve deeper, the veil between real and imagined starts to fray and Cathy is drawn into a dark world of occult ritualism and blood sacrifice. Directed by Lynne Davison and written by Matt Harvey, Mandrake is a delicious slice of witchy, Northern Irish folk horror, dripping with atmosphere and arcane lore. While Irish horror is having a moment right now, with acclaimed titles such as Aislinn Clarke’s Fréwaka and Kate Dolan’s You Are Not My Mother mining rich and cr...
Read more

Kensal Green Cemetery

During a recent visit to London, a friend and I decided to explore Kensal Green Cemetery in the west of the city. Founded as the General Cemetery of All Souls by barrister George Frederick Carden in 1833, Kensal Green was inspired by the garden-style cemetery of Pere-Lachaises in Paris. Comprised of 72 acres of beautiful grounds, it was not only the first commercial cemetery in London, but also the first of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ garden-style cemeteries established to house the dead of an ever-increasing population. Campaigners for burial reform were in favour of “detached cemeteries for the metropolis” and in 1832 Parliament passed a bill that led to the formation of the General Cemetery Company to oversee appropriate measures and procedures concerning “the interment of the dead.” The company purchased land for the establishment of Kensal Green in 1831 and held a competition in order to select an appropriate designer. Among the prerequisites in the brief provided to entrants, we...
Read more