Snuff 102

Once again... very good reviews, bad rating. Now which should you trust on this movie?? In my case I should have trusted the vote... like expected "Snuff 102" is another take on the Snuff-Genre with DV-Cameras and low production value, much reminding of course of August Underground. But in contrary to the other reviewers I found this one much less shocking. Mainly because it tries to be intelligent by incorporating psychological statements, dialog thats as endless as the sequences of screaming girls and some artsy shots of meaningless pictures... which by the way look rather cheap to me. I was about to end the movie after the bleached out opening sequence. The movie is roughly about the snuff genre and a woman investigating on it.. wasn't Tesis a similar plot, don't remember for sure. Anyway ... you got her talking to a psychologist, surfing the web and looking at strange sites all mixing with the sequence of 3 girls bound and gagged and tortured while stumbling into the chaos of course. Now there is some plot and they even tried a kind of twist in the end but basically of course its about seeing girls bashed and tortured and even cheaper ... they regularly mix in stupid pictures from Rotten.com which gives the movie a real cheap and stupid feel. The mixture just doesn't work although the gore FX looks pretty realistic... anyway, with such bad picture quality its not such a big deal. So if you mix movies like August Underground, Scrapbook and the style of Slaughtered Vomit dolls and add some try of being intelligent on it you can watch this since you already know what kind of production value is awaiting. After all I found this one extremely boring and by far not as sick as Slaughered Vomit Dolls which had a very similar noisy and artsy collage style or as realistic as August Underground which was boring anyway.

Snuff 102 is a poor-quality attempt at a shocking, brutal thriller, but I cannot bring myself to hate it or even really dislike it. It is one of the few films with a relentless, oppressively grungy atmosphere that manages to be surprisingly disturbing. It is not as full of maiming and torture as you may think, sometimes dragging out long scenes of conversation and philosophy, yet it is much more disturbing than garbage like the sorry excuses of filmmaking August Underground.

Low on plot, yes, but high in its atmosphere and and aesthetic. The camera lens is grainy and dark, the gore effects are realistic, the film is soaked in a sickening brown-reddish lighting, but easily the best aspect of the film, which largely contributes to its disturbing nature, is the sound design. It's loud, overbearing, and clanging. We are blasted with loud industrial metal beats, synth and drums. There are gruesome sounds of wailing, screaming, and gory squishing, all while we are presented gruesome scenes of torture. Snuff 102 uses its low quality \cheap filmmaking to provide an outstandingly atmospheric film, one that leaves you feeling like you just need to take a long shower afterwards. Even without all the brutality, the grimy grittiness is almost sickening in this film, and it is the main reason I did not rate this film lower.

Additionally, Snuff 102 is more thought-provoking than I expected it would be. I would be hesitant to say this is not torture porn, but I also would not say it's a completely pointless film. The goal of the film is clear: to make a disturbing film with a message against human exploitation. The film makes its comparisons of pornography with snuff, as both are rely on abuse of the human body for personal enjoyment, all at the cost of the victim. It additionally argues that lack of restriction and privacy of pornography results in people willing to fall into total degeneracy; when you no one to stop you or discover you, why should you not fall into utter hedonism? It's a similar point made by Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (albeit a lot more effectively), but it uses snuff as an example to argue against pornography's perversion and evil.

Now, given my few praises of the film, why did I rate it so low? Truthfully, it's a bad film. It has earnest and respectable intentions, and it has some redeeming things about it, but it's technically atrocious. The camera quality is horrid, the cinematography is poor, the acting is stilted, the plot is practically non-existent, it's dragged out far too long in many scenes, and the editing is generally terrible. Though there are some interesting editing tricks using acceleration (visually reminiscent of Tetsuo: The Iron Man) the film's pasting of images on the screen, transitions and slow-motion outweigh the few decent cases of acceptable editing. Seriously, it sometimes looks like it was put in any old video editor, and random effects were just dragged onto the editing timeline. I have little to say here, as the technical quality is sloppy in quite literally every way, but it's honestly hard to blame the filmmakers, as it's clearly low-budget, and it isn't completely pointless, mindless exploitation (looking at you, August Underground).

Watch the film if you wish for a disturbing, gritty, and legitimately harrowing experience. Do not watch it if you are expecting a film of decent quality. Its brutal reputation is well-warranted, and it's far better and more disturbing than August Underground or Slaughtered Vomit Dolls. Still, it is hard to recommend unless you want some shocks.

Like almost all (horror) films, Snuff 102 requires a minimum of open-mindedness, and above all trying to understand what it is: like what is this work? (this is a clichéd remark, but I insist and I will explain).

In my opinion, snuff 102 is first and foremost an excellent survival movie. We follow characters involved in bizarre events, we see them suffer, look for solutions to escape, communicate, etc. There are some ultra-thrilling scenes and I love survival! Especially when survival appears realistic within the ecosystem of the film.

So: 1st point: a great survival.

Then, Snuff 102 is a very gripping snuff movie, with a careful, glossy atmosphere, AND it is a formally very original film, on the border between reality and fiction.

Mariano Peralta wrote and directed a work that mixes genres: we follow a journalist, the film is like a documentary of her work. There are videos of real violence, real-fake snuff passages created by the director, and flashbacks to the daily lives of the tortured characters. I really try not to spoil anything, so it's not easy to tell the story. The mix is perfect, it really feels like it's a real doc and a real snuff (both at the same time). The structure is therefore quite complex, even if the narration is very refined.

So: 2nd: an extraordinary found-footage.

Finally, there are the directing choices: Mariano Peralta did not want to make a classic torture-porn (a genre that I really like). Above all, he wanted to cover important subjects with his film, to make himself think and make the viewer think. This film is from 2007, and poses very interesting questions about our relationships with image, bodies, violence, private life, etc. Far from being a film that wants to shock or delight in violence (and there are plenty of them that are cool), we are almost faced with a social chronicle approach (which requires fans of splatters to move on, the goal is not to push the limits of gore). It also shows a very critical view of society (and many other things), while letting the viewer form their own opinion about the events (there is no over-commenting on what we are told ; just food for thought). In short, it is this accumulation of elements which makes it so striking, which blurs the boundaries between myth and reality. Snuff 102 is therefore astonishing, glib, sticky, intelligent and the young director has produced a committed film with mature writing. The two main characters are brilliantly written.

I would add that the actors are great (the pregnant woman was actually pregnant: everyone was very involved) and you never feel a lack of budget.

So, 3rd: rich content that will work with you long after, if you accept the journey

Needless to say, I love the ending, perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the film.

Here are my impressions of this remarkable first film. We have excellent entertainment and a great horror film (which offers its share of strong sensations and cold scenes - one of the true extremes movies), which also allows itself to be exciting. I've seen it 3 or 4 times, it's a sure/solide thing!

An investigative reporter, researching the phenomenon known as 'snuff', gets some first-hand experience in the subject after she is abducted by a psycho, taken to a blood spattered basement, and filmed whilst tortured (along with a couple of other unfortunate victims).

If you are a fan of extreme underground horror, then you have probably heard at least some of the controversy and hoopla surrounding this film (about the realistic gore, which led people to believe that the on-screen carnage they were seeing was real, or how the director was beaten up by an irate member of the audience after one particularly nasty sequence). However, any extreme underground horror fan worth his (or her) salt knows that it's never wise to believe the hype: more often than not, the rumour-mill isn't exactly providing accurate information.

For starters, I've seen this film described as 'faux-snuff', which it most certainly isn't: with its multiple camera angles, distinct narrative, creative editing, and an effective thumping industrial soundtrack, it could never be mistaken for 'the real McCoy' (and I don't believe that was ever the director's intention). Also, the gore in this film isn't really that graphic: sure... a LOT of nasty things happen to the women in the basement, but Snuff 102 manages to suggest a lot more than it actually shows.

The quality of the footage is grainy and has been treated with filters to achieve a distressed look; much of the action occurs in shadowy conditions, making it hard to discern what is happening; and clever editing deceives the viewer into believing that they have seen much more than they actually have. So, the 'chiselled teeth' scene, although certainly nasty, isn't as stomach-churning as it might've been, and the 'stomping' of the pregnant woman (the killer crushes her head and her distended belly), which is admittedly nauseating in concept, doesn't really warrant attacking the film-maker.

Much more disturbing, in my mind, is the inclusion of genuine images of pain and suffering taken from the internet (the sort of thing to be found on dubious sites such as Ogrish or Rotten), and a couple of scenes of animals being killed and mistreated (I always find real gore difficult to stomach).

Director Mariano Peralta has certainly delivered a gutsy, taboo-busting film which is genuinely unsettling, but is it the last word in gruelling snuff-themed cinema, as some might claim? Definitely not. Snuff 102 has far too many moments that drag (a very dull beginning and lots of talking throughout), is a little repetitive, and features much too much in the way of artistic pretension for it to walk away with that accolade.

Gory Argentinian film that doesn't really have any plot, the film switches between a girl's home, a room where three women are being held captive by a psychopath and psychobabble by an expert who tells us what are the reasons behind Snuff films and why the subject holds the publics interest. Snuff 102 also intersperses some dodgy internet "Snuff" clips, all in all the film is a sickening viewing but it left this viewer cold. I like this kind of material on occasion, but it was more the styling of the film i don't care for. Like the expert in the film says, those who watch such films don't really care for those that are being butchered, i have to agree.