30 Day Film Challenge-Day 28

​A film that made you feel uncomfortable

​If a film about a man investigating the dark underworld of snuff porn and potential real murders captured on said films doesn’t make you a little uncomfortable, I’m not sure what will. I don’t honestly remember where I first heard about this film, and it was a while before I was able to sit down and watch it, but it did certainly make me a bit uneasy.

8mm is clearly designed to make the viewer feel this way and even within the world of the film, there are instances where Nicholas Cage is watching some of the films he is investigating and cringes as he watches. There isn’t much in the way of “real snuff footage” in the film, and what is shown is relatively tame, but the concept of the film and the underlying story are enough to make you question the true nature of our society. I don’t know if things like this actually take place in our world, but the fact that someone can think up a story about it indicates that it might, and that saddens me.

Despite the somewhat cult status of this film, there are some pretty big names in the cast. The aforementioned Cage is the lead as investigator Tom Welles while Joaquin Phoenix plays the adult video store employee Max California that Welles enlists to help him in his investigation, this being one of the roles of his that led up to his appearance in Gladiator. The Sopranos’s James Gandolfini also appears in the film along with Catherine Keener.

The film was directed by the late Joel Schumacher who passed away earlier this year and I would argue serves to cleanse the failures of Batman Forever and Batman & Robin from his resume, both of which were released earlier in the 1990s. That’s not to say that this film received great reviews when it was released. It didn’t, but it was also quite a departure from the comic book world of the Dark Knight, perhaps representing some of the darkness he wanted to put in those films, but wasn’t allowed to by the studio.

If you’re OK with being uncomfortable, give this one a shot. If even reading this post made you a little uncomfortable, you’re probably better off skipping it and waiting for tomorrow’s film.
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Day 27 – A film that is visually striking to you | Day 29 – A film that makes you want to fall in love

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