Rent Tesis (1996)

Excellent - Tesis review by Popeyethetim

This used to be a difficult film to source. A tense thriller on snuff movies. Well worth it. Pace builds through the film. Its well directed and tight and builds to a sense of the usual inability to escape from the clutches. It is well worth getting this out to see a genre from a Spanish side rarely seen.

Curiosity Killed the Viewer - Tesis review by griggs

Alejandro Amenábar’s debut feels like the work of someone who already knows exactly how to mess with your nerves. Tesis follows a university student researching violent media who stumbles onto something far darker than she bargained for. What starts as a harmless project turns into a slow, creepy descent full of dusty VHS tapes, hidden rooms, and that uneasy thrill of watching what you shouldn’t.

The story revolves around the myth of “snuff movies” — those rumoured films that supposedly show real murders. None have ever been proven to exist, but the idea alone is enough to get under your skin. Amenábar uses that urban legend to explore our own morbid curiosity — how easily the line between observer and participant starts to blur.

He builds tension with a steady hand, skipping cheap scares in favour of atmosphere. Ana Torrent sells the whole thing with a perfect mix of curiosity and fear, while the dark, narrow corridors and grainy lighting do half the work. It’s never gory — the real horror is what you think you’ve seen. Slick, stylish, and unsettling throughout.

Still, Tesis can’t resist explaining itself a bit too much. Sometimes you wish it trusted the audience more. But as first films go, it’s sharp, confident, and knows exactly when to hit pause.