TESIS (THESIS, 1996)

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Snuff Film (noun)
"A pornographic movie of an actual murder. May or may not be distributed for financial gain."


So, I'm sure most of you have heard about "snuff films", and that most of you know that the existence of said films, as defined, is pretty much complete, moral-panic bullshit. 


In TESIS, we have a young film student named Ángela who want to write her thesis on films containing violent imagery, and why such images hold fascination for people. She openly considers such footage to be "disgusting", and yet, at the start of the film, she tries to get an eyeful of a man who has been gruesomely killed on a subway track, but she is escorted away before she can see past the paramedics. Clearly, Ángela herself is morbidly interested in the concept and imagery violent death.


She hears through the grapevine that another student, Chema, has a large collection of porn and violent horror films. Though he is uninterested and off-putting at first, he eventually relents and allows Ángela over to see some of what she's asking for, mostly because she's "gorgeous". Before long, her curiosity will lead her to steal a videotape from a university viewing-room when her professor is found dead of an asthma attack. Hearing some of the audio later, she takes the tape to Chema, afraid to watch it herself, and they both find that the tape has been used to deliberately record the torture and death of a young woman, who turns out to be a missing university student.


Unable to let this go, Ángela becomes determined to find out where the tape was hidden, and the identity of the murderer as well. This, quite naturally, puts her in deadly danger, as she tries to unravel a mystery that has become her obsession.


TESIS is a well-made thriller, with a nice pace that builds and builds over its run-time, and it does a very good job of keeping you guessing about the identity of the killer. You end up with several suspects and red-herrings, each of whom seems a valid possible culprit, before everything is finally and violently revealed. And, we get some great performances from Ana Torrent and Fele Martínez who play Ángela and Chema, respectively.


4.5 stars (****.5), highly recommended.


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