Film #4: Thesis

Alajandro Amenabar’s 1996 film Thesis (the Spanish title omits the "h") was made a few years before he jolted audiences with his hallucinatory Open Your Eyes. But his debut, which won six Spanish Goyas, is a bellwether to his immense talent and a precursor to his 2001 American film debut The Others starring Nicole Kidman (and to nabbing the 2005 Academy Award for the Javier Bardem-led medical drama The Sea Inside). Ana Torrent is terrific as a Spanish film student toiling away on a thesis about the psychological effects of extreme violence in the media. While researching, she gets wind of a snuff video shot in pre-reform Czechoslovakia, a mysterious tape of which is now hidden in the cavernous basement of her university. With her only confidant being Chema (Fele Martinez, also accomplished, injecting some humor in this dire tale as Torrent's geeky gorehound classmate with a prurient interest in the video), they go on a quest for the storied tape. As a nascent team, they investigate further and...well, let’s just say they get into the deep end and leave it at that.

Though Thesis occasionally ventures too assuredly into slasher movie mode, it’s always smart and expertly crafted (comparisons to The Vanishing, George Sluzier’s petrifying 1991 cult horror classic, also aren’t unreasonable). Additionally, it happens to be scary as all get out, particularly in a relentless final half hour jammed full of paranoia, pain, and plot twists. Forget about 8mm, the disappointing Nicolas Cage vehicle about snuff that ripped off Paul Schrader's superior 1978 film Hardcore. Thesis is everything the Cage film wanted to be, but wasn’t. The Schrader work would pair well with Amenabar's for a petrifying, prime double bill.