Thesis [Tesis]

I’m a fan of films that include fictional snuff films as part of the plot. Cannibal Holocaust. Celluloid Nightmares. Sinister. It’s a pretty effective plot device that allows for meta-commentary on the nature of violence in film.

But even before—well, before Celluloid Nightmares and Sinister anyway—Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar made the discovery of a snuff film a key component of his first feature film, Thesis [Tesis].

Thesis [Tesis] is a thriller released in 1996. Considering the rise of torture porn films in the following decade, it feels oddly prophetic. It follows Ángela Márquez (Ana Torrent), a university student who stumbles upon a snuff film while researching her thesis on the impact of violence in cinema.

I’ll admit, I’ve known about Thesis [Tesis] for a while now. I kept it in my back pocket for a time when I’d run out of free films I wanted to watch and needed something to tide me over until new stuff hit the queues. I’m not usually a big fan of thrillers, but I could tell I was into Thesis because I started it way too late at night—and it still kept me up past 3 a.m. That’s usually a solid indicator I’m into a film. My advice? When the new stuff isn’t hitting, go old for a bit.

From the opening, you can tell Thesis [Tesis] is going to deliver. It starts with a subway making an abrupt stop. Officials board the train and tell everyone to get off carefully. There’s been an accident. Everyone is instructed to look forward. A man jumped in front of the train and was cut in half. In line is our protagonist, Ángela. She tries to join the few people gawking at the body. It’s a very human moment—and probably, unfortunately, what I would’ve done. Maybe not physically leaving the line, but I definitely would’ve turned my head to look.

That’s what makes Ángela such a compelling character. She puts on a front so other academics think her interest in violence is moralistic—that she opposes gratuitous violence in film. But her actions say otherwise. Ángela is just as drawn to violence as the rest of us.

In trying to gather the nastiest films for Ángela, her thesis director stumbles upon a hidden room in the university’s audiovisual archives and finds a film so horrifying it gives him a heart attack. Naturally, Ángela finds him dead. Instead of getting help, she steals the video and runs off.

Later, Ángela watches the video with Chema (Fele Martínez), an audacious outcast and fellow media studies student she seeks out because of his reputation for owning exactly the kind of disturbing material she’s after. Turns out, the tape is a snuff film showing the murder of a missing student from their university.

The two decide to keep quiet: Ángela doesn’t want to explain how she got the tape, and Chema doesn’t want to become a suspect. But when Ángela leaves the tape with Chema overnight, he makes discoveries that suggest they might be able to track down the killer.

I know I just laid out a lot of plot, but this all unfolds in the first third of the film. Thesis [Tesis] doesn’t waste time getting where it’s going, which is why I could start it after one and stay glued to the screen until the end.

As I said, I’m not normally a fan of thrillers. I don’t usually enjoy whodunit misdirections where the killer ends up being the last person you’d expect because that’s how these films work. Instead, Thesis [Tesis] keeps us guessing by making every new person in Ángela’s life a plausible suspect—and then shifts the spotlight onto Ángela herself, for continuing to engage with people who could be involved. Essentially, Thesis [Tesis] uses the thriller framework to turn Ángela’s relationships into a psychological case study of someone secretly attracted to violence and danger.

But my favorite scenes in Thesis [Tesis] are the ones where Amenábar reveals the shame in characters who possess material they shouldn’t. There’s something authentic about these moments that rarely gets depicted on screen. Showing repulsion to snuff is common. But Chema already owns a bunch of Faces of Death-style mondo films, and Ángela intentionally seeks him out because of it. In that context, her disgust reads as half-performative—meant to hide her fascination. Chema isn’t bothered by it at all. But he also lives a solitary, suspicious life, so it’s clear he carries some shame too.

It’s often said that Amenábar intended Thesis [Tesis] to criticize the Spanish film industry. But thirty years later, I think it’s safe to say Spanish cinema is in a much better place—especially when it comes to horror. [REC]. The Skin I Live In. Terrified. Guillermo del Toro. I could go on.

The lasting legacy of Alejandro Amenábar’s Thesis [Tesis] comes from its insight into people who test the boundaries of decency until they finally find something that genuinely disturbs them. If you’re a fan of extreme films, you probably know exactly what I mean. You can’t unsee something once you’ve seen it.