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There seem to really be only two things required to make a good thriller film. You need to put your character or characters in legitimate danger, and you need to make sure that what that character or characters need to do to survive isn’t obvious. A part of the danger has to be that we don’t know who to trust—that anyone could end up being dangerous or the cause of the terror. Thesis (or Tesis in the original Spanish) is a master class in creating this kind of tension. That it happens to be the debut feature-length film from Alejandro Amenábar makes it only that much more impressive.
A large part of the tension in Thesis comes from not just the way the film is set up, but the subject of the film itself. Thesis is very much a film that dives head-first into the idea of snuff films, following from Mute Witness from the previous year and followed by 8MM a few years later. It’s a subject that has always been of some dark fascination for many horror fans—films that touch on the subject feel dangerous, and Thesis, while it never feels at all like a snuff film, definitely does feel dangerous.
Angela (Ana Torrent) is a university student in Madrid starting to work on her thesis. The subject she has chosen is audiovisual violence and the family. If you think that’s too specific or odd for a thesis topic, you’ve never talked to anyone working on their thesis. Anyway, she asks her professor and thesis advisor Professor Figueroa (Miguel Picazo) for help in accessing the most violent films in university library. She also talks to Chema (Fele Martínez), a fellow student who is known to have a passion for both pornography and extremely violent films. While Angela tries to get what she can from Chema, Professor Figueroa goes to the library to find what he can, and is discovered the next day by Angela, apparently dead of some sort of attack while watching a film, which she steals.
Angela takes the video back to Chema, and it appears to be an actual snuff film of a student named Vanessa, who disappeared a couple of years previously. Chemo, thanks to his affinity for film and film technique, figures out what is the most likely camera is. Later, Angela spots the brand of camera Chemo mentions in the possession of Bosco Herranz (Eduardo Noriega). Meanwhile, Angela is given a new thesis advisor in Professor Castro (Xabier Elorriaga), who Chemo is convinced is a part of the group of people making the snuff films.
And this is what makes Thesis so interesting as a film. Angela, who is simply looking for more information for her thesis, has found herself pulled down into a terrible web of danger and death and truly disturbing and horrible events. And who exactly is she supposed to trust? Chemo seems to know more than the average person should and doesn’t seem terribly put out by what appear to be actual snuff films. But Chema also seems to be completely honest with her, and is convinced that Bosco is a psychopath. Bosco is charming, but seems dangerous as well. And Professor Castro seems to know too much about what Angela is doing and what she has done, and has the authority to cover up what is happening at the university.
All of this is played really beautifully throughout the film. As the audience looking on, we don’t have any way to know who we should trust (apart from Angela) or the true motivations of anyone in the film. Additionally, since we are talking about film students and film professors, there is the important question of how real anything we are seeing is. When these characters fight each other and hurt each other, is it real? Is it all a show to get Angela to trust the wrong person? We’re going to be left guessing until the last 10-15 minutes of the film.
There are natural connections in Thesis to Mute Witness, since both deal with snuff films, just as 8MM builds in many ways on what is done here. That said, the film that I am most put in mind of here is Anatomie from a few years later. There is a sense of secret society here, of something dark under the surface of the world that everyone else is walking around in.
I like Ana Torrent as an actress, and she’s great in this, as always. This is the first film Fele Martínez, and the second for Eduardo Noriega, and both of them are at the top of their game. Noriega, who plays the heavy in The Devil’s Backbone, has always played this sort of charismatic sociopath (or is he?) like he was born to it.
This is a disturbing film, but it’s also a damned good one. It’s probably more thriller than horror, but there’s enough here that is disturbing for it to sit in both genres.
Why to watch Tesis: This is how you do a truly tense thriller.
Why not to watch: Boy, this is not a fun topic.
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