Snuff: A Documentary About Killing on Camera

rosen, who probably was in charge of coffee runs on several film sets, reads a news article and describes something that probably never happened.

they include a crime-scene photo of sharon tate and jay sebring. i can understand why- the whole myth of manson family movies.

video store clerks as experts and old A&E American justice footage doesn't make this a documentary.

it is an interesting movie though.

work harder next time.

also, when someone proclaims that hard that something really happened, it probably didn't happen.

It has to be said from the get-go that this is no proper documentary as it's circumstantial and somewhat manipulative (maybe even insufficiently documented for all I know). But while the case studies it brings about certainly have this feeling of tabloid garbage fed to the masses by the teaspoonful, what it all boils down to at the end of it all is that it manages to raise the question of whether or not snuff cinematography is more than an urban myth (again). The answer it seems to convey is a definitive yes and, knowing human nature as I do, I tend to agree.

Sadly though there's just too much beating about the bush. Snuff and mainstream cinematography ('Cannibal Holocaust')? Snuff and war footage? You're missing the point here and stretching the concept way past the rupture point.

That said, if you happen to have a chance to watch this and can put up with its violent content, do not hesitate. And I mean really, really violent 'Saw'-has-nothing-on-this kind of content.

There is a really good documentary on the subject of snuff - and it's not this one. The good one, The Dark Side: Does Snuff Exist?, is not only better designed, but has a more sensible look at the subject, too. This one, on the other hand, feels like a bad attempt to shoot a "real horror movie" disguised as a documentary. The main selling point, the segment about seeing supposedly genuine snuff (hey, what do you know, a producer of a documentary on snuff just conveniently happened to have seen a real snuff tape! What an amazing coincidence!), felt like a badly acted lie. In fact, it sounded pretty much like a copy of a story that an Israeli journalist wrote about a few years ago, except of course that the Israeli claimed that he was the one who saw the tapes.

Then there's that Russian crime ring tale that makes up the other half of the documentary and that smells even fishier. If it was true, you'd think there'd be some more sources that wrote about it, other than one English tabloid and one Italian tabloid. In fact, it should be a worldwide sensation present in all media for months (remember Fritzl?), but there's not a word of it in any major newspaper ANYWHERE. Plus, those allegedly real Russians supposedly kidnapped and killed dozens, but they were released after a few years because of "overcrowding"? And then one of them goes and wins a pool contest? All it's missing is a UFO and a crop circle.

And it certainly doesn't help the documentary at all that most of the "experts" interviewed in it look and act like drugged, cackling maniacs. One of them makes Tom Cruise seem calm and collected.

What seemed like an interesting documentary turns out to be either utterly fabricated, or horribly (read: not at all) researched. Skip this and catch "The Dark Side" instead.

This really isn't a good documentary about the topic of "Snuff" but is mostly about movies in the open market that has some realistic looking killings on camera. It's interesting though, for the most part but a lot of it seems to be over done. And I did enjoy it talking about real snuff films around the world, particularly about the Russian crime ring tale even if some claim it to be fake and if it is, it's a interesting lie. But as a whole this really isn't a good documentary and you will not gain that much info about snuff but more about realistic killing in certain films that is in the open market like I said, and I do agree with a lot of what the other reviewers are saying, some of the stories in this does sound a bit fishy. Cause they mention a interesting topic they can really get into, but after mentioning it, they never really get into it. The main flaw with this documentary is how it goes way past it's point and not in a good way either, it should of just stuck with the main topic at hand instead of stretching it. So not a good documentary, but interesting to say the least.

4.6/10

Man, were my hopes crushed after watching this 'documentary.' It's supposed to be discussing the existence of actual snuff films (films of murders produced for profit), but it fails so miserably at this that it basically turns into a group of random people talking about gory movies (like Flowers of Flesh and Blood, Cannibal Holocaust, Henry, Trouble Every Day, etc.). Also, the 'professional' views seem more like they're just fa group of friends hanging around talking in front of the camera. I mean, their key 'witness' is a 'cinephile and filmmaker' with no real credentials other than he's watched some movies. His role as a filmmaker? He wrote one movie 10 years ago that has 74 votes on this site. So, literally, a single-film maker, I suppose.

Anyway, it could've been an in-depth and intelligent look at the snuff film 'industry,' but ends up being just a bunch of people without real reason talking about gory movies, war, and serial killers. Interesting subjects turned boring by uninteresting speakers on them.

Oh, also, I don't think I could get more annoyed than I do when I hear someone say, "It is very unlikely that ever in the history of cinema was a person killed on a camera for the purpose of profit." Really? Unlikely? Of the billions of people in the world and the many million that could've afforded to pay someone to do that, you have to assume that at no point did some rich guy have a murder fetish and paid someone, say, $100,000 (or more) to film someone getting killed? The odds that that NEVER happened are extremely slim just by the fact that EVERYTHING is done. Rant over.

Final Verdict: 5/10. Simply for the gore scenes and occasional bit of info.

-AP3-