8MM (1998)
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Joaquin Phoenix, James Gandolfini
Director: Joel Shumacher
Synopsis: Seedy, nasty attempted Se7en clone
Reviewed by: Omar Khan

 

Following the monumental debacle that was Batman & Robin, Joel Schumacher—the former shop-window display assistant turned Hollywood heavyweight—returns with a dark, seedy and brutally violent thriller set within the murky world of pornography and sexual exploitation.

Nicolas Cage plays private investigator Tom Welles, who is hired to determine whether a young woman really was murdered during the making of an apparent "snuff" film—a pornographic production in which one of the participants is genuinely killed on camera.

From the outset, 8MM inevitably invites comparisons with David Fincher's Se7en. The similarities are hardly surprising, since both films were written by Andrew Kevin Walker and both attempt to explore the darkest recesses of the human psyche. Unfortunately, while watching 8MM, one constantly has the feeling that Walker is desperately trying to recreate the oppressive atmosphere that made Se7en so unforgettable.

This time...

he falls some distance short.

Schumacher leads the audience on a guided tour through the pornographic underworld, presenting a landscape of sleaze, degradation and moral decay. It is an undeniably unpleasant world, populated by pimps, pornographers, fetishists and assorted human wreckage.

Joaquin Phoenix attempts to inject some humour into the proceedings as Max California, the owner of a sleazy adult video store. His throwaway one-liners—"It's like a gas station here. You pay before you pump."—are clearly intended to lighten the mood.

Instead, they feel rather forced.

Rather than bringing authenticity to the film, Phoenix's wisecracks often come across as Schumacher's rather self-conscious attempt to convince us that this really is how the inhabitants of the sex industry behave.

The film begins reasonably well, building an effective sense of unease as Welles descends ever deeper into this sordid world. Unfortunately, somewhere around the halfway mark it runs badly out of steam, abandoning psychological suspense in favour of increasingly routine revenge thriller territory.

Before long, 8MM degenerates into little more than a Death Wish-style vigilante movie, punctuated by an escalating orgy of violence before finally arriving at its admittedly unsettling conclusion.

Its closing message—that unimaginable evil often hides behind the most respectable faces, and that the most depraved individuals may well be regarded by neighbours and family as perfectly decent, caring people—is genuinely disturbing.

The problem is that the film never explores its own ideas with any real conviction.

It touches upon child pornography, snuff films, teenage runaways, prostitution and sexual exploitation, yet treats these subjects more as opportunities to shock than as issues worthy of serious examination.

That ultimately becomes 8MM's greatest weakness.

It mistakes ugliness for profundity.

Rather than confronting the darkness of human behaviour with intelligence or insight, it simply immerses itself in degradation, apparently believing that relentless unpleasantness somehow equates to seriousness.

The result is an exploitative, trashy cousin to Se7en—a film that borrows its predecessor's atmosphere without ever approaching its intelligence or emotional impact.

An undeniably ugly film...

about an undeniably ugly world.