A journalist (Yamila Greco) has been captured by a snuff film producer
(Rodrigo Bianco) with two other people, a pregnant woman (Andrea Alfonso)
and a porn actress (Silvia Paz) who's in the business to finance her drug
habit. While trying her best to escape the ruthless killer, the journalist
has to see the other two women being brutally murdered. Flashback to two weeks
ago: The journalist decides to write an article on snuff, and, knowing
very little about the subject, she turns to a film critic (Eduardo Poli)
for advice. The critic fills her up with philosophical and leftist
theories about snuff and porn ... until the journalist finds some
authentic snuff photos among the critic's books, photos that actually show
him in action ... which forces the critic to knock her out and ... Back
in the now, the journalist has finally managed to make good her escape,
but the killer is in hot pursuit. Ultimately though, the journalist wins
the upper hand, and she slaughters the killer pretty much as brutally as
he has slaughtered his victims on video ... What was supposed
to be an intellectual arthouse thriller about snuff movies
ultimately comes along as little more than another sensationalistic film
that - just like the Italian cannibal movies from the late 1970's/early
80's - uses animal killings to improve its gore score, while its actual
gore scenes are rather restrained (possibly for budget reasons). Now all
this (safe from the animal killings) wouldn't be too bad if the film's
narrative build-up would work better ... but actually, most of the film is
just an overlong set-up for its (admittedly pretty tense) finale, a set-up
that alternates between weird popular theories on the snuff phenomenon
without any real insight, scenes setting up the characters that make their
point too bluntly, and torture scenes that are by far not as well staged
as they could have been. A directorial effort more reminiscent of
contemporary videoclips than anything else doesn't help much either. That
said, as a thriller, the film is not as bad as I make it to be, basically
because the finale is really explosive, but as a serious discussion piece
on snuff filmmaking, Snuff 102 fails to give the viewer any new
insight.
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