Yours portly has been something on a late 1990s/early 2000s nostalgia kick lately, mainly as I have been cleaning out my Drawer of Forgotten Technology to try to sell random bits of twenty-plus-year-old gear to randos on eBay. It seems that all of that pre-YouTube, pre-Facebook, pre-Web 2.0/3.0 technology seems popping up in my pop culture consumption, too: movies about a mostly-pre-digital, mostly-pre-Internet world, when most things were still analog, or at least some intriguing blend of the analog and the digital.
So it was that I came upon the 1996 Spanish film Tesis (or Thesis), a psychological thriller based upon VHS technology and—gulp!—sn*ff films.
For context, the mid-1990s saw the scandalous Faces of Death films in every Blockbuster and mom and pop VHS rental place. I never watched them—and I never will!—but they were ubiquitous, especially with their claims of being banned in over 100 countries. Even as a kid, I knew these films were actually bad, not just cheesy horror movies dressed up to be terrifying (of course, I also thought the Child’s Play movies were uniquely scary-looking, only to find as an adult that they’re mostly played for laughs and are truly absurd). There was a general sense at that time—before we could just look up awful stuff on the Internet with ease—that truly nasty stuff was getting out there to an audience that, while despicable, was apparently large enough that family-friendly video stores were renting Faces of Death tapes. Indeed, the tapes weren’t even hidden behind some beaded curtain or the like—they were just out on the main floor, for any impressionable youngster to see.
Tesis plays on that general public panic over and fascination with these lurid films. The main character, Ángela, possesses a deep fascination with violence. She finds it repulsive, but what repulses also attracts, and the subtext of much of the film suggests that Ángela is wrestling between her ethical objections to violence and her borderline sexual attraction to it.
Ángela is writing a thesis (thus the name of the film) on violence in media. She soon links up with the class outcast, Chema, who is into really violent movies—especially ones depicting real violence against real people. Her chubby thesis director also enters into the bowels of the university’s video archives to find some extremely violent and obscure footage to aid Ángela with her research.
The next day, Ángela finds her thesis director dead in one of the school’s viewing rooms. Out of morbid curiosity, she steals the tape he was watching, and takes it Chema. It turns out to be a sn*ff film.
Chema and Ángela quickly figure out that the girl in the film is a classmate who disappeared months earlier, and that the killer used a specific Sony camcorder to film the execution. Soon, Ángela runs into the handsome and charming Bosco, who owns the same camcorder used in the sn*ff film. Ángela soon finds herself unsure who to trust: the jaded Chema, the intense Bosco, or the Hollywood-obsessed new thesis director.
What unfolds is a tense and intriguing psychological thriller that sees Ángela going deeper and deeper into the mystery—and, at one point, deeper and deeper into the university, where she and Chema stumble upon a secret film studio.
It took me over two weeks to finish the movie, not because it was bad—quite the opposite; it’s one of the best flicks I’ve seen in awhile—but because of my insane schedule. In spite of that, I still managed to keep up with the major plot points and clues, a testament not to any genius on my part (I’m bad at solving mysteries), but to the gripping nature of the film. The back-and-forth between Ángela and Chema is humorous, as Ángela’s curiosity slowly pulls Chema out of his crusty shell. Chema also has at least two major moments of heroism, even though he is portrayed as being misanthropic and uncaring.
Bosco makes the third side of what might be a love triangle. Bosco attempts to seduce Ángela (and her kid sister) on several occasions, with an intense undertone of perceived violence every time. Ángela is intrigued, but never quite gives into Bosco. Chema and Bosco both attempt to undermine the other in Ángela’s eyes, adding to the confusion.
Tesis is really good. If you’re a fan of 1990s psychological thrillers, Tesis is a must-see. If you grew up in the 1990s and ever played around with a massive camcorder, Tesis will take you back to that quaint time of floppy disks and black-and-white viewfinders.
Right now, it’s streaming on Shudder, but might be available on other platforms. Figure out where to watch it, then watch it—preferably in one setting, not in five abbreviated viewing sessions over the course of two weeks.