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2009-11-29

The idea itself with a sole perpetrator that kidnap young girls just to rape, humiliate and kill them on camera might not be a new one but it’s certainly an attractive one when it comes to pseudo snuff, which is what this film is all about. I have to admit that I was expecting a stronger, more explicit tale of violence but this is really a brilliant imitation of a genre so concealed in mysteries that no one has been able to prove its existence – yet!

The quality of the picture is crap and you don’t se any naughty and/or violent details at all and I think that’s the main thing. What you get is a film that the perpetrator records and this is just about what it would look like if he has lousy equipment. Very realistic indeed! One might think that he should have concentrated on capturing more graphic details if he’s going to get something out of his own recording later but that is not the case here. There is somewhat of an explanation in the end credits about this but I’m not going to give it away here.

There’s a big problem with the sound though, it’s so bad from time to time that it’s hard to hear the dialog. This might partly be for accomplishing the same effect as for the crap picture – realism, but there’s also a problem with the soundtrack, the music drown the voices, more or less. I really like the soundtrack though; it enhances the pictures and creates an atmosphere for the movie. But at the same time it’s bad for the realism, I don’t think that a real snuff film would have had any music what so ever!

Brandon (Shane Ryan) behavior towards the young woman becomes more and more violent during the film and that’s exactly the image I have of a perpetrator of his kind in my mind. Obsequious and flattering at first so that she will give in to his perversions and then a change of personality! The camera shakes and moves all over the place and with the combination of the bad picture this successfully hides what really happens and we – the viewers, must just our imagination instead. I usually claim that this is the preferred way to tell a disturbing tale but I am not certain about it in this case. I would like to have more of the violence and sex in the frame instead of outside it. It becomes kind of tame and it’s difficult to keep interested even if the movie is just around 70 minutes.

Definitely an interesting movie worth seeing, but not the masterpiece I was hoping for.

Tommy Söderberg