Tesis (1996)

AKA: Thesis
Year: 1996
Directed by: Alejandro Amenabar
Starring: Ana Torrent (Angela), Fele Martínez (Chema), Eduardo Noriega (Bosco), Xabier Elorriaga (Prof. Castro), Miguel Picazo (Prof. Figueroa)
Country: Spain, European Cinema
Language: Spanish (English subs)
Runtime: 02:04:08
Genres: Snuff, Serial Killers, Violence against Women

Plot – Spoilers:
Angela has a developing taste for the morbid and decides to prepare a thesis on the subject of Audio-Visual Violence. Her University Professor, though initially skeptical, encourages her and offers to help with access to some of the more effed up sections of the Uni’s cinema archives.

From an academic viewpoint, she attempts to befriend a weird guy at school, Chema, who’s notorious for his collection of effed up cinema apart from his choice of tshirts that include a Cannibal Holocaust ode. Chema is socially awkward but invites her over to watch some of his greatest hits, because she is “gorgeous”, as he puts it.

Things however begin to get murky when Angela’s Prof dies while watching a movie he borrowed from the School archives – Angela later finds it to be a snuff movie of a college girl who went missing couple years before. She shows it to Chema who activates his sleuth mode and tries to extract clues from the video. Meanwhile, Angela finds herself sexually enamored by a mysterious student Bosco, whom Chema hates and is jealous of.

Within no time however, Angela becomes the next target for the snuff movie makers, and she finds herself suspecting everyone around her.