Documentaries: Snuff
Snuff is a documentary with a certain type of hype behind it, the kind of hype that says “Don’t watch, go away!” knowing that your brain is tickled from the moment you hear about it. Like Faces of Death before it, Snuff explores death on camera, but this time it is to a more serious degree.
The film presents itself as a sort of scholarly lecture, featuring interviews with some relatively unknown people, the most notable of whom is Mark L. Rosen, producer of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, who contributes his own first-hand experience with some part of the “snuff industry.” Rosen’s story is fascinating, but, it is as close as the movie gets to actually exposing the existence of snuff as it is popularly percieved.
The movie’s true focus seems to be the second half of it’s title Killing on Camera, because it spends much of it’s time talking about and showing the only kill videos that can legally be distributed: Iraqi beheadings. Because they are the only thing close to snuff that they can show, it does feel a bit exploitative. I mean, if it were legal for them to show kill vids made by Americans, Europeans, or anyone outside of the war zone, would they?
It is not, I think, that the filmmakers don’t have the balls to show you real evidence of snuff, it’s more that it is incredibly difficult to approach this subject legally. At the same time it is not the fact that we see no real snuff film that makes this doc feel sort of empty, it is the fact that the time it spends talking about the real thing feels rushed compared to all of the fluff that the movie spends time on.
Still, though, the movie flows well, and it feels very professional and polished. What sucks, however, is that the interviewees that talk the most are the least interesting. Instead of talking to some crazy movie buff guy in a black turtleneck, it would have been more useful to attempt to gather interviews with more people who have had first hand experiences with snuff.
Snuff is a documentary that never feels like it isn’t put together to shock you into watching it like Cannibal Holocaust or Faces of Death, but unlike those movies, once you’re in the seat and watching it does it’s damndest to convince you ofthe horrible reality of snuff films and how it takes someone that is sick to watch real death for entertainment.
Snuff is an intruiging diversion for those too frightened to do their own research on this grisly subject.
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