SNUFF MOVIE aka SNUFF
Year: 2005
UK: Lionsgate UK
Cast: Jeroen Krabbe, Lisa Enos, Hugo Myatt, Joe Regan, Teri Harrison, Sharif Rosales-Webb, Alastair Mackenzie, Lyndsey Marshal, Catalina Harabagiu, Viorica Voda, Tudor Necula, Andrew Tiernan, Vlad Ivanov, Luana Stoica, Roxana Andronescu, Aurel Boata, Andrei Ionescu, Daniel Pusleaga, Romeo Raicu, Vali Vasilescu
Director: Bernard Rose
Country: UK
UK: 93 mins
UK Certificate: 18 contains strong bloody violence, horror, sex and language
UK Release Date: 27 October 2006 (Limited Release - London, West End Empire)
Synopsis
London 1888 - Dr Culpepper approaches the dark and terrifying mansion of Mr Maezel in his carriage. He hears a blood-curdling shriek from within the house. Terrified, he enters the seemingly deserted house. He ascends the grand stairs to the master bedroom where he finds Mr Maezel, who we will soon realize is Boris Arkadin (Jeroen Krabbe.) Boris explains that his wife, Mary has died in childbirth, but he believes that the fetus is still alive. He wants Dr Culpepper to perform a caesarian on the corpse. Dr. Culpepper complies and indeed they rescue the infant - though when they take Mary's corpse down to the basement to inter her in the family tomb, we see that a tear falls from her eye. She was not dead, but is now buried alive!
Some days later the infant cries for its mother and Boris can hear the sounds of Mary trying to get out of her tomb to reach her child. Boris is driven mad by these thoughts - unsure if he really hears the sound or is imagining it, but when he confesses his fears to the midwife he suddenly sees the door to the nursery burst open and Mary standing there at the threshold with blood on her shroud and the evidence of some bitter struggle on every portion of her emaciated frame.
At this moment of shock we realize that we are in fact watching the latest work of 'horrormeister' Boris Arkadin in a screening room in his house, which happens to be the same location that he used in the movie. All his friends are there and they are shrieking and enjoying his new movie. It is 1975 and a party starts up after the screening. We see all of this recorded in super 8mm film. Boris gets a call from the cutting room. The studio wants some changes and Boris is forced to leave in a hurry. Mary, who is really married to Boris, is pregnant for real and she seems to be flirting with her ex-boyfriend, Justin as soon as Boris has sped off in his car. Someone is filming them through the window, and it soon becomes clear that there are a group of girls and an unseen man - whose scary face we glimpse in the window - closing in on the partygoers at the house. A dreadful house invasion takes place with all of Boris' guests murdered by the girls and the unseen "Man with A Movie Camera". Mary's unborn child is cut from her belly.
We see a "documentary" about the appalling murders that took place at Boris' house. We hear how Boris has withdrawn all of his movies in shock and horror at the appalling events. We hear how the girls were caught, and the child survived. We hear that Boris has become a recluse - never leaving his house, never seen in public anymore. This documentary is being seen on TV by Wendy (Lisa Enos) and her boyfriend Andy (Alastair Mackenzie.) It is the present day. They seem to be a happy couple - she an actress and he an advertising graphic designer. We see that someone is spying on them - shooting them through a spy camera in their cable TV box.
Wendy goes on an audition for a part in Boris' new movie. As Wendy leaves the office we see that someone is following her - the Man With A Movie Camera - he takes her picture.
Wendy is driven to Boris's house by Andy as she is to spend a couple of days there - an extended audition for the movie. Andy is very reluctant to let her go there. Wendy meets the other "actors" in the movie, which is being simultaneously shot through hundreds of hidden spy cameras. They are: Pamela (Teri Harrison) - a gorgeous bottle blonde who knows the value of her looks, Jack (Joe Regan) - Pamela's nerdy boyfriend and Matt (Sharif) - a cool dude. Leon (Hugo Myatt) - Boris' assistant does all the dirty work and keeps the show going.
At Dinner they all finally meet the great Boris Arkadin and the movie begins - after some very one sided contractual negotiations. Boris introduces them to Marco (Teodor Necula) his mute and tortured son now grown up that was torn from his mother's womb.
And then the fun begins - a rollercoaster ride through Boris' twisted and twisting funhouse of horror, pain, humiliation and perversity, building to one of the most outrageous climaxes ever staged for a movie... It is Satan's Grand Ball - a veritable carnival of death set to a trance mix of Bach's mass in B minor; a truly horrific, visually spectacular sequence.
What appears to be the next morning, when Andy arrives to collect his beloved Wendy, we're delivered one final shocking blow - which leaves us guessing...
Did any of it REALLY happen?