Movie Review by Neil Sadler
Starring: Jeroen Krabbe, Lisa Enos, Hugo Myatt, Joe Regan, Teri Harrison
Director: Bernard Rose
A new horror film from the director of PAPERHOUSE and CANDYMAN, SNUFF MOVIE tells the story of a horror director (Jeroen Krabbe) who after the murder of his wife and friends by crazed fans goes into hiding. Years later, he is about to make a new film – SNUFF MOVIE – and recruits a set of actors inviting them to film at his mansion. But all is not as it seems and the lines between real and fantasy horror blur.
Bernard Rose has proved he is capable of producing good low-budget horror and this is his first horror since CANDYMAN. Whether this is deliberately low-budget or he just had no money, I couldn’t say, but it appears to have been shot very hastily and comes across as rather confused and worse, confusing. Although at times, it is meant to wrong-foot the audience. There are many times when what you think what you are seeing is real but it turns out to not to be. However it ends up having so many layers that you really don’t know what is real. After a while, this stops being a statement and becomes quite annoying.
None of this is helped by some really amateur acting, shoddy camera work, characters you really don’t care about and very, very cheap make-up effects. There are moments when SNUFF MOVIE is genuinely creepy and disturbing. At times it is just plain nasty but the overall impression is of some good ideas, badly executed.
It would be interesting to hear some kind of commentary to explain what went wrong – but sadly this DVD doesn’t even have a making of.
