I'm going to review a mystery thriller movie Thesis (1996) also known as Tesis. Some people took it as a horror movie but this is not exactly a horror movie. This movie is directed by Alejandro Amenábar, a Spanish movie director who I mostly know for the movie Open your eyes. That's a really good movie. The thesis was his feature film debut. The synopsis is while doing a thesis about violence student Angela (Ana Torrent) finds a snap video where a girl is tortured until death, soon she discovers that the girl was a former student in her faculty.
So like I said some people took it as a horror movie because the subject matter alone of this movie is like a horror element for them in itself. This is an engaging story about violent media and the way we consume it and our obsession with it.
The main character Angela is a great character to follow because she starts off the movie very much condemning violence, she doesn't agree with how people have become desensitised to it and that's why she's doing her thesis project on this. But you can tell even early on she is drawn to the violent images, kind of how we all are that just becomes more and more pronounced as the movies goes on but the idea of her investigating a snuff film makes it a whole lot scarier because there is something very real that videotape. It's just physical media, in general, seems scarier. Though, to be honest, I feel like nowadays I'm so used to being like digital media and things just seem less tangible and with visual effects with technology where it is we can fake things a whole lot easier but there's something about that tangible media how you have to record it like on film it's on an actual tape, it elevates it somewhat the realness of it. I did give up about halfway through trying to figure out who the bad guys were, what was going on. Amenábar did a really good job making you doubt yourself multiple times like back and forth. While watching the movie you'll be in Angela's shoes, That's how she's feeling she doesn't know who to trust as more and more comes to light with this snuff film ring that she's kind of stumbled upon.
The ending is super satisfying from my perspective and it really drove home that message about our obsession with violent media. The movie ends with a news reporter giving a warning about the images you are about to see are very disturbing.
I really like this movie and I'm glad that I didn't miss watching another wonderful 90's Spanish movie.
On IMDB this movie has a 7.4 out of 10, on rotten tomatoes it has 83% critic scores and an 89% audience score.
