Up to Snuff

Tesis (Alejandro Amenábar, 1996)

Video cassettes brought cinema to our homes; spawning a new era in how we watch films. Gone was the ritualistic process of having to find out what the local screenings were in advance; along with the potential of a film being ruined by a bunch of annoying twats sat in the auditorium. Video brought convenience to the masses. It was capable of making us more prone to analyse what we watched more forensically. It also opened a pandora's box, as more mature content, bereft of a video classification, became more accessible to minors; including rejected theatrical titles which found a second chance on the home format. It would lead to the Video Nasty hysteria. More importantly, it would usher in a new generation of extreme cinema aficionados and the effects of video violence upon society. Hence, the impetus to Alejandro Amenábar Tesis (AKA Thesis, 1996).

Ángela Márquez (Ana Torrent), a student at the Complutense University of Madrid, is researching the effects of audiovisual violence upon society for her thesis. She's introduced in Amenábar's film onboard a stationary train. Along with her fellow passengers, she's made to alight from the transport, as a person had thrown themselves in front of the tracks. With morbid curiosity, she scrambles to get a peak at the gory mess. An official guides her away from the gruesome sight. Ángela's ghoulish interest is also evident when she asks her tutor, Professor Figueroa (Miguel Picazo), to lend her some dodgy tapes from the university's video archives; for research purposes, of course. This begs the question: what kind of reputable educational establishment would have morally reprehensible content on its shelves? Ángela also enlists the help of weirdo student Chema (Fele Martinez), a loner known for having an appetite for extreme horror and pornographic films. 

The mystery unfolds once Ángela's professor stumbles upon a mysterious iron door in the archives and discovers a room with video tapes. Figueroa comes to an unfortunate end, when Ángela finds him dead in the screening room; apparently while watching the tape he retrieved from the archives. Whether or not foul play was at hand, remains ambiguous. However, given the professor's obese state and constant respiratory wheezing, he could have just as well popped his clogs whilst watching Mary Poppins (1964). Our protagonist grabs the tape and rushes back home, without reporting the professor's death to anyone.

Ángela attempts to watch the tape at home, but is too afraid of whatever horrors she will see. Instead, our protagonist records its sounds onto an audio cassette. Listening on her walkman, the chilling sounds of a girl being tortured are too much for her. Therefore, it's off to Chema's fly-tip of a hovel to get him to watch it and describe what's occurring on-screen while her back is turned. Whist her back is turned and Chema's grisly intrigue, the pair stumble upon the revelation that it's an actual snuff tape. To drive it closer to home, Chema recognises the victim as a former university student who disappeared a couple of years prior. Thus, much like that all too familiar giallo trope, Ángela and Chema become unwitting amateur sleuths in a film laden with curveballs and misdirections to sate fans of Hitchcock style thrillers and Italian gialli.

Apart from its dark plot, heightened tensions and palpable suspense, what really drives Tesis forward is how well written the characters are. Ángela and Chema are like oil and water. At first, our heroine is like a moth to a flame in her morbid curiosity. She can barely watch the horrors which draw her, but she gradually is able to face it once she spends more time with Chema. A similar transformation happens to her sidekick. He becomes much warmer to Ángela, once she realised, much of his obnoxiousness and edge lord behaviour is more or less a personal shield in dealing with the outside world. Ought to add, despite living in absolute filth, Chema is right up there Mark Petrie, Tommy Jarvis and Charley Brewster as great fictional horror aficionados. Chema unashamedly wearing a Cannibal Holocaust (1980) T-shirt to university and adorning posters of Shocker (1989) and Alien 3 (1992) in his grotty bathroom speak volumes to me. A stark contrast to Ángela's solitary film poster in her bedroom of My Own Private Idaho (1991). Which has me cheering for him to not to die, solve the mystery and get the girl, even if he does give off school shooter vibes.

 

Bad boy Bosco Herranz (Eduardo Noriega) enters the fray as another integral character in the film. He's spotted by Ángela operating the same model video camera linked with the recording of the snuff film. Equally damning, is his association with the victim from the tape. Looking like Spain's answer to Paul Walker (Pablo Juaquez, if you will), Bozco has Ángela both swooning and terrified of him. A key sequence reveals Ángela's mental being, as she dreams of having sex with Bozco, before he stabs her. Worth mentioning, both Ángela's mother and sister are smitten when Bozco charms his way into their house. The complete chad to Chema's virgin. 

Despite the few instances which defy logic (the secret area behind the metallic door in the university's video archives, being the obvious one), a night club playing the most atrocious euro techno music, and being around fifteen minutes too long, there's a lot I like about Alejandro Amenábar's thriller. Abundant plot twists and a number of red herrings, make it constantly engaging. It's all the more impressive once you realise this is incredibly low budget, written and helmed by a twenty three year old film graduate shooting at his university, and more importantly, more enjoyable than Mute Witness (1995) and 8mm (1999), two other Hitchcockian style thrillers from around that era, also themed around snuff films.

Tesis swept up all the major Goya awards (Spain's answer to the Oscars) in 1997. Alejandro Amenábar would follow-up its success with his science fiction drama Open Your Eyes (1997). He would cast both Martinez and Noriega again, alongside the gorgeous Penelope Cruz. It would get the American remake treatment, retitled to Vanilla Sky (2001) and starring action movie midget Tom Cruise. The remake would also feature Penelope Cruz reprising her role. Amenábar would also deliver The Others (2001), a fantastic supernatural chiller with Cruise's other half at the time, Nicole Kidman. No idea what Amenábar is churning out today, but I can confidently claim, he came out of the gate running with his impressive talent as both a writer and director. Tesis is superb mystery thriller.

Here's a currently working YouTube link of Tesis. Not sure how long it will remain, though,