The lore around that film is built as part of a character’s journey. Cigarette Burns, mentioned above, is about the search for a lost film. Lost Footage films come in a number of flavors. This is the perfect entry point into the genre for those who haven’t seen it and was an absolute joy to watch for the nth time.įury of the Demon (Fabien Delage, France/Croatia, 2016) It’s delightfully reverent to film and horror-dom, with nods to Dario Argento, the Sitges Film Festival, Kenneth Anger, and many others. Pre- Walking Dead Norman Reedus is a joy to watch, as is the legendary Udo Kier, who’s at his best as a creepy benefactor. John Carpenter is not only a master director, but a master of selecting scripts, and both this and his other Masters of Horror entry, Pro-Life, are testaments to that. Not only is Cigarette Burns among the best entries in Masters of Horror, but it’s also easily in the upper tier of Carpenter films as well and would feel totally at home in his amazing run of films between 19 ( The Fog through They Live, for the curious). Released between Ghosts of Mars and The Ward, Cigarette Burns feels like a last hurrah at the end of Carpenter’s career. As he gets closer, the film becomes an obsession and rapidly consumes his sanity. Nonetheless, Kirby sets out to find the film. His prayers seem to be answered when he’s introduced to Bellinger (Udo Kier), a strange but wealthy film fanatic who offers him $100,000 to procure La Fin Absolue du Monde ( The Absolute End of the World ).Īs is typical of the genre, Kirby learns that La Fin Absolue du Monde is apparently cursed, and all screenings have ended in murder and mayhem.
#Snuff films movie
Released as part of Mick Garris’ Showtime series Masters of Horror, Cigarette Burns follows Kirby (Norman Reedus), a film dealer and an apparent “fixer” who’s trying to raise money to save a struggling movie theater. John Carpenter’s Cigarette Burns is perhaps the purest example of a Lost Footage film. What better way to juxtapose those films than with a few of these….Ĭigarette Burns (John Carpenter, USA/Canada, 2005) On top of that, Shudder has premiered its new series on “Cursed Films,” which covers the real films with disastrous productions.
Tiger King, Netflix’s hot new docuseries, is fascinating its audience with extreme amounts of voyeurism, and a subject who’s obsessed with the media spotlight. People are spending lots of time inside, binging copious amounts of video.
It’s a particularly great time to spend some time catching up with these films. There’s also a significant amount of commentary on the craft itself, as well as the merits of amateurism, and its place among film. Others question mankind’s fascination with horror films and the love of being scared. Many question whether viewing violence makes us violent or desensitizes us to violence. They tend to comment on the effect of film on its audience. As a film fan, there’s something uniquely fascinating about these films.
#Snuff films plus
While this may seem like a thin subgenre, it has some seriously impressive entries by a range of master filmmakers, plus some underseen gems. Because the origins of snuff films are based in reality, viewers are reminded of just how deep humankind’s depravity can go. While the threats that exist behind these tapes may not be as inherently terrifying as Sinister’s Bughuul or The Ring’s Sadako/Samara, they tend to elicit different, more visceral fears. Some of the most haunting entries here revolve around the existence of snuff films. These aren’t always supernatural consequences, as we’ll see. Unlike found footage films, lost footage films focus on the characters who find these objects, and suffer the consequences. The Blair Witch Project, REC, V/H/S, etc), these films, which I’ll call “Lost Footage,” center around a piece of media that has some sort of sinister history. Unlike the traditional Found Footage genre (e.g. They do, however, fall into a narrow but impressive subgenre of “Found Footage” films that center around characters finding, or witnessing a piece of media that they shouldn’t. Despite the similar mechanisms, the films themselves have little in common. While I’m nowhere near the first person to connect Sinister with The Ring, I suspect it’s not a connection many horror fans make. It’s a recent and excellent entry in the canon of “Cursed Tape” films, a subgenre of horror that was popularized by Hideo Nakata’s Ringu and Gore Verbinski’s 2002 American remake The Ring. In 2012, Scott Derrickson’s Sinister chilled audiences with gruesome 8mm snuff films of family annihilation.