![]() ![]() The experience is made even more compelling by Cage’s performance as a decent man slowly descending into madness, with his character becoming obsessed with this horrific case. From the near-casual presentation of deeply unsettling categories of illegal porno (everything from “cats” to “kids”) to the final reveal about who produced the mysterious snuff film and why, the movie is at its best when exploring the negative impact of extreme media on the human psyche, ultimately suggesting that evil is much closer to home than you might think. Falling down a perverted rabbit hole, the duo eventually uncovers a seedy underworld of extreme pornography, misguided artists and violent sadists.Įven in its toned-down form, 8MM boasts quite a few legitimately chilling moments. The ensuing investigation leads Welles all the way to Hollywood, where he reluctantly partners with porn-store clerk Max California (Joaquin Phoenix) in order track down the origins of the mysterious film. If you haven’t seen the movie, Nicolas Cage stars as Tom Welles, a private eye hired by a wealthy widow to discover if the alleged snuff film in her late husband’s collection is the real deal. While the completed film only hints at the depravity behind Walker’s original story, the excellent cast and stylish direction make 8MM a delightfully eerie detective story that’ll likely leave you feeling dirty once the credits roll. Joaquin Phoenix was also brought in to co-star, as well as Peter Stormare and even James Gandolfini. Naturally, production went on regardless of the behind-the-scenes drama, with Nicolas Cage personally expressing interest in the project, resulting in a much larger budget. At the end of the day, the director was justifiably concerned about the film not finding an audience due its intended portrayal of gore, sexual assault and even pedophilia. While it’s easy to judge Schumacher for siding with the studio (especially once it became popular to criticize him after Batman & Robin and The Phantom of the Opera), you have to remember that he had previously given us classics like The Lost Boys and Falling Down, and wasn’t necessarily trying to sabotage Walker’s story. According to Walker, “the problem was that it wasn’t sustaining the misery or suspense as much,” which led to a more conventional end product. The original script is actually available online, and while the plot changes aren’t quite as drastic as the writer suggests, there is a pretty big difference in tone. This led to a public falling out between the writer and director, with Walker abandoning the set and disowning the completed film, claiming that they had butchered his screenplay. Unfortunately, Schumacher agreed that Walker’s dreary vision was way too dark for general audiences and chose to rewrite some of the movie alongside Nicholas Kazan. The studio inevitably asked Walker to tone down the script’s heavy subject matter, but when Schumacher came onboard the project the writer believed that the two of them could fight the higher-ups like he had previously done with Fincher on Seven. While the producers were convinced that they had a certified hit on their hands, they also suspected that the story’s graphic content might alienate their target demographic, and that’s where the trouble began. Walker was already in demand after having written David Fincher’s Seven, so it’s no surprise that the studio paid a whopping $1.75 million for the script to 8MM. ![]() Revealing the dark intersection where art, sex and death meet, 8MM was originally conceived by critically acclaimed screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker as a bleak neo-noir/horror hybrid. Several scary movies have attempted to explore this terrifying concept, with varying degrees of success, but the most notable of these might just be Joel Schumacher‘s controversial 8MM, a flawed but memorable thriller that comes frustratingly close to being a horror masterpiece. ![]() While there has never been a confirmed case of murder-on-tape being intentionally distributed for commercial purposes, the idea of snuff films has captured the imagination of writers and filmmakers for decades now. As the world becomes increasingly desensitized to extreme media, it’s easy to imagine unsimulated death as the disturbing final frontier of both horror and pornography. ![]()
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