Country:
USA
Recognizable Faces:
None. Just people who knows about snuff movies.
Directed By:
Paul Von Stoetzel
A snuff movie is a film where somebody is killed on camera for the sole purpose of monetary profit. It can be sexual, cathartic or pretty much whatever the client is into. Also, snuff movies are a myth. According to Snopes, there's no evidence of an actual copy of a snuff film ever existed. So making a documentary on them is a little problematic. Because documentaries are suppose to document reality, at least in the academic definition of the term.
So what is there to this movie? A lot of terrible hearsays and stories for sure. One about a Russian dude named Dmitri Kuznetsov, who supposedly smuggles some snuff pedophilia (can it get any sicker?). No copies of his movies have been ever found and the taped conversations he had were suspicious at best (a discussion with an Italian buyer who calls his movies fake and disappointing), so Kuznetsov is still free right now. There's another story, told by the same guy, named Mark Rosen. He allegedly saw a snuff movie in the Philippines in the seventies where a girl gets her throat slit during the act. Riveting testimony it is, but it's also just a testimony. That's as far as documenting snuff movies as Von Stoetzel's film goes.
For a good fifty to sixty minutes (out of an overall seventy-five), Snuff: A Documentary About Killing On Camera dissects the perception of snuff phenomenon in the mass media. About how some completely fictitious movies like Snuff or Cannibal Holocaust were perceived as the real deal and how their directors ran into troubles. Von Stoetzel also examines the angles of serial killers filming themselves and soldiers war tapes. Both none of them ARE snuff. They're pretty violent, but they have nothing to do with what the movie wants to talk about.
So Snuff: A Documentary About Killing On Camera is not exactly a documentary in itself. But it sure tries its best shot and sparks a lot of debates in its trail. With the proliferation of violent videos on the internet, it's hard to believe snuff movies didn't exist or haven't already existed. The question is, what's the best angle to talk about it? Reality clearly fails expose snuff movies. Fiction on snuff like 8MM and Tesis were also far from convincing. You can't talk about myths and anchor your claims in reality. So what do we have left? Paul Von Stoetzel doesn't succeeds at documenting snuff, but you can hardly blame him for giving it his best shot.
SCORE: 62%
