8MM is not a film for all tastes. In retrospect, probably not for my taste either, but it was a riveting watch. It’s also one of the old ones which made it a suitable watch for me in this journey of watching old cinema. It was released in the US and Germany in 1999 and stars Nicolas Cage.
It is a neo-noir film that takes you into a pornographic world of wicked men who take advantage of young women. I’d never heard about snuff films before this one, so if you have, this film basically is about an investigation around a snuff film which was considered an urban legend because no one in their right mind makes that kind of stuff right? Nicholas Cage plays Tom Welles, a private investigator who was hired by a Mrs Christian to determine if the snuff film she found amongst her late husband’s private possession was real or if the butchering was fake.
He plunges into this world with the assumption that it will take a little 'here and there' investigating and then he would return back to his wife and baby, but no one goes unscathed in this world. As Max California, a pornographic employee he’d met to get information and help get access to guys higher in the chain like producers etc said to him “The devil doesn't change; he changes you."
The late Mr Christian is unfortunately not who Mrs Christian thought he was as the film is found to be real. The killing was not staged at all. Mary Ann, the girl who was sold this glamorous world of Hollywood was really just a nobody to these men whose only motivation to kill for pleasure was simply because they could afford to and it gave them pleasure.
This film did a fine job of also showing that a murderous intent does not have to hide in a body that has contours formed in a way to allude to evil. You know when you’re creating protagonists in cartoons and illustrations, you look for visually striking features that can be described in words like ‘evil eyes’ or a sharp contour, some velvety menacing voice. However, the face of evil can equally be unassuming in real life, just as it was in the person of the man they called ‘the machine’ who was responsible for the blood cuddling killing of Mary Ann on set.
I feel like this is one film that really sets the depravity of man on display and also emphasizes the subset of depravity which is man’s unique depravity to women. Tom Welles takes on the role of an executor and kills these men. I really wasn’t expecting that. He let the crime get to him and took it personally. Perhaps because he had a daughter and maybe could not imagine this happening to her? However, I still wonder about this emotional breakdown from a private investigator. I expected more detachment from his clients since he acted this way in the introductory scenes.
I’m glad I watched it even though it was really dark and I needed a good sleep to shake the ‘dirt’ off, mainly because of the social education I got. Like I said earlier, I now know about the existence of snuff films and I appreciate better the vulnerabilities of people who get lured into such a tragic and dangerous world.
If you watched this, please share your thoughts as I’m always happy to read.
I rate this an 8/10.