This type of mystery/thriller is one I enjoy very much. The story is about a university female student that is planning to do a thesis about violence. In order to begin her research, she asks her professor for help in finding tapes that include violence from the university’s library. The professor accepts the request although, with some embarrassment due to the type of film. He doesn’t want other people believing he is a sadist.
She makes the same request to a male student who goes to the same class, she doesn’t really know him but he apparently has the reputation of enjoying hardcore films such as those from the gore category. The guy is certainly a little bit weird but he doesn’t look threatening nor dangerous.
After the guy accepts showing her his video library, they start to develop some type of friendship or mutual confidence. However, this development is very slow and at several points, there will be mutual suspicions about the real interest of the other person, probably because of how they began their contact with each other, by watching gore videos. If you don’t know what are gore videos, they are real-life videos of people suffering all kinds of horrible things, such as being murdered or tortured.
Up to that point, there was nothing intriguing in the movie. The big mystery begins when the professor who went to retrieve the tapes from the university’s library, is found dead inside the university’s cinema room, where he was watching one of the films he retrieved. The girl finds the tape he was watching, and it turns out it was a gore film, with the victim being an ex-student of the faculty who dissapeared2 years ago. From this point forward, the movie will spiral into a net of suspicions and deceit.
There are several intense moments and it would be difficult to figure out who to trust. One minute we will think one character is the murderer and in 10 minutes we will think another character is the one responsible. Everyone will have their time as the main suspect from the perspective of the viewer. The plot was very original in my opinion, it was a little bit similar to the plot in the video game Life Is Strange, and I mean only the part about the crimes.
If you enjoy the mystery/thriller genres, this flick would be an excellent choice to watch. This is not a gore movie, some short scenes and glimpses of the fake gore tapes from the plot are shown but nothing brutal. The best part of the movie is how the mystery is researched by the girl and how deep it goes.
The best
- Excellent plot with good twists.
- It had a good setting, a university’s faculty of cinema.
The worst
- The movie is a little bit old so some performances felt outdated.
- A part of the movie where the girl is running through her faculty felt exaggerated. Specifically, her decision to run inside places that were completely empty. Faculties are always full of people but she found a way to run into large places where there was no one in.
More information: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117883/ Review: AAA In numbers: 7.5/10