When one researches Mariano Peralta, they will find out that his previous work never got as much exposure as this sorry excuse for a movie. His previous work also consists of 15-30 min shorts that never really got off the ground, which might be the reason why he decided to make a "movie" like Snuff 102 in the first place. The movie itself feels like it can't decide between being a faux-snuff horror, outright torture porn or a serious movie and tries to be all at once, making it fail miserably in all departments.
It's also clear that this movie was made as brutal and revolting as possible because Peralta must have known that he did not have the talent to make a proper movie and thus needed to hide this reality behind a messy concoction of blurry and digusting scenes filmed with an equally terrible camera. It shows in the movie's many plot holes.... Just a TL:DR of the "story": A journalist chick decides to investigate snuff movies and the concept of violence itself. So she interviews this movie critic guy (who might or might not be called Malena because the movie doesn't list the characters by their names, not that all of are properly named, just Malena and this Leo guy, who's a minor character that got a gig for the second victim that ended up leading her into the killer's trap and her death). However she soon finds out that he's engaged in illegal stuff and has necro pictures at his places, which prompts him to kidnap her and decide to make her one of the starts of his next snuff tape (we only find out about this by the end of the movie because you see, the torture scenes and snippets of the interview randomly cut from one place to another over the course of the movie). There are multiple terrible aspects of this "movie" but I want to focus on the main villain first because I swear he's the worst horror movie villain I've seen....
Come on, the big bad killer (literally a skinny dude with a ski mask pulled over his head and a ridiculous pullover with an equally ridiculous turtleneck, which makes him look like a stereotypical hipster turned criminal) acts like a complete moron. He supposedly has killed 99 people by the movie's beginning and 101 by the end of it as he meets his demise, yet he acts like an amateur and runs around like a headless chicken when the main character unties herself (why haven't any of his previous 101 victims done that, if the room is littered with random glass shards?) This idiot also uses the same location over and over and it isn't some secluded basement or bunker mind you, it's the most generic abandoned house you could think of and it has literal graffiti in it, which begs the question why somebody hasn't stumbled onto his operation or found his bloody torture room because he as sure doesn't bleach the place once he's done (the dried blood on the wall looks more like rotten tomatoes or feces than fake blood btw). It also feels like this stupid killer doesn't have a plan at all. At first, he ties the first victim to a chair, only to beat and punch her before throwing her onto the ground, where the worst and most controversial part of the movie happens (not going to describe it beside the fact that victim is a pregnant prostitute, other reviews have described it in detail and Wikipedia has a plot synopsis of the entire torture as well) anyway, which made his efforts to bother tying her feet to the legs of the chair completely useless and not worth the time. He just decides what do on a whim, which makes him a very dumb snuff filmer. He also appears to wear gloves when torturing the victims but touches at least one of them with his bare hands, which pretty much makes them redundant (common knowledge: criminals don't use gloves just to look intimidating, they use them to prevent leaving finger prints.....). His torture room is also set up in a weird way.... He just puts his tools on the ground in a messy pile.... Why? The room is also dark when the power actually works in a supposedly abandoned house and he uses some terrible portable light that doesn't do the job at all (while the adjacent bathroom he uses to dismember the victims is lit up like a Christmas tree.), so his "scene" isn't lit up well (the movie is dark, so you don't see a lot of the things happening or the torture but wouldn't his snuff tapes be too dark to see anything in-universe as well, so I don't think that this idiot would really profit from them). Btw his all-black outfit also blends in with the dark scene, so you only see some white-ish blobs (the eye and mouth holes in his mask along with his gloves) flailing 'round the room. Why, if he's supposedly a ruthless and experienced serial killer and snuff filmer? Also, this guy's equipment is a "joke"....he's supposed to be a film critic that uses his movie making knowledge but he just slaps a cheap handheld camera on a tripod and calls it a day.......... The guy also appears doing everything on the spot without any prior preparation or planning.... He's only setting up his camera and torture room when he brought the victims in, even if that could have been done beforehand to save time..... The fact he doesn't even have a table to lay out his torture equipment says a lot about him (and this movie)..... He also doesn't show any emotions, even if he's supposedly getting aroused from torturing women besides sometimes pleasuring himself, which just looks awkward.... All in all, he just becomes the most generic and boring villain that looks more like an extra playing an IRA terrorist in a movie 'bout The Troubles or an enemy from The Hoods ripped straight out of Manhunt.
He's also played by two different actors for some reason (maybe the first guy refused to do the first scenes?) and Peralta is supposed to be voicing the killer but he doesn't say anything at all (I even combed this movie's subtitles to find a line because I'm not going to watch the full torture scenes and there wasn't anything). One guy is playing him when he's unmasked and giving an interview to the MC (a journalist chick)... Another is playing him when he's wearing that ridiculous ski mask and actually torturing them... Surprisingly enough, that actor who played the killer in the torture scenes was the only one to make it somewhere in the acting biz (even having a role in a Disney show called O11CE). To leave this idiot and focus on other parts of the movie, I would like to finish off with that the killer's end is as equally pathetic as his entire character. He gets knocked out with a rock by the MC and finished off with his own machete, even if he had the upper hand over her. He caught her but for some reason decided to strangle her rather than to use his machete, which he was flailing around like some video game bot while he was chasing after her. Btw, his movement looks unnatural and more like crappy animations from a PS2 game than something out of a live-action movie (maybe the actor was uncomfortable with playing that role but was desperate for the paycheck?)
Like this half-review and half-rant already alluded to, the movie's story isn't really structured well and is all over the place. The reason were mentioned above already, so let's move onto the technical side of things now...
And now... The general visual and audio quality of the movie. The footage is dark, blurry, grainy and overall terrible (maybe it was a desperate attempt to set the mood but I think it exposes the movie for being just a terrible torture porn). That's in the torture scenes and don't get me started on the scenes that are meant to detail the MC's interview with the killer and the lives of the other victims.... Peralta thought that it would make the movie more scary or edgy by editing in a black and white filter over them, which unwittingly lays the fact that this movie was filmed with a terrible camera bare for all to see. Those scenes look like some amateur YouTube shorts rather than something out of a "serious" movie, which Snuff 102 desperately tries to present itself as. And the audio... Oh, Christ, the audio.... The movie is in Spanish, so most viewers will have to resort to downloading subtitles to even grasp what is going on in the non-torture scenes but the torture scenes are really something onto themselve...and not in a good way..... It sounds like if somebody looked up a generic "porn sounds/moaning" sound effects video, downloaded it as a poorly compressed and edited file and then played it over the footage while also editing in various squishy and thumping noises over it (it all comes down to sounding like "eh eh eh eh eh" like one review on Amazon already alluded to). At the end of the day, it just sounds like some bad porn..... And I'm not kidding.... The music in this movie is just annoying and there are also rumors that Dodeccaheedron from the Aphex Twin was also used in the movie but it sounded so terrible that it made people, myself included, that Peralta just ripped it straight off the net and used in the movie without the composer's permission, so no effort and no care or respect towards the work of others.
The director also thought it was somehow a good idea to mix in real footage of beheadings and animal cruelty while claiming that ALL of the violence and torture in the movie was REAL when he debuted the "movie" at a film festival. Because of the movie's brutality, including the aforementioned scenes where the pregnant victim gets brutally tortured, and most likely the claim it was real in the opening disclaimer, Peralta ended up getting beat up by two enraged members of the audience (according to him, two men approached him and one of the was cussing him out and attacking him, which led Peralta to hit back and the other guy joined in, which resulted in Peralta getting sent to the hospital). After this debacle, no theater or streaming service would pick up this movie, which ensured it was a de-facto flop and the proposed sequel died in the crib (Thank God)
Would give it 0 starts, if possible.
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