thesis 1996 film

Jotted Lines

A Collection Of Essays

Tesis / Thesis (1996 Movie): Summary & Analysis

Summary: .

Film student Ángela is writing her thesis on violence in audiovisual media. At the university, she discovers the body of her thesis director, Prof. Figueroa, who died while watching a video that turns out to be a snuff film. The plot of this psychological thriller unfolds through Ángela’s research on the disappearance of a former classmate, tortured and murdered on tape. Unsure about whom to trust, Ángela is targeted as the next victim as she draws closer to exposing an underground ring of snuff films produced by a fellow student and professor. Set in the 1990s, the film engages a critique of violence in television and film, market forces producing audiovisual media, and voyeuristic desires of audiences, as well as the burgeoning practices of security camera vigilance in public spaces. 

Amenábar’s feature-length debut, a psychological thriller of the intrigue genre about ‘snuff’ film, is in many ways an exploration into the darkest underside of the demand for spectacle in which visual media are produced, whether for television or film. As the film student Ángela pursues research for her thesis on audiovisual violence (‘a daily occurrence in film and television’), her desire to view footage all too graphic to appear in the media is eclipsed by the dangers of exposing an underground ring of snuff films produced in the university. It is this turn from Ángela’s interest in viewing graphic violence to the threat that she herself could become the next victim of a snuff film which structures the narrative for viewers, similarly to the genre of a detective thriller whodunit, in which all relationships outside the family are suspect. The ensuing intrigue confronts viewers with complex questions about spectatorship itself in which the morbid interest in seeing tortured and mutilated bodies censored from the public eye is satisfied by an underground market that must ‘give the audience what it wants to see’, as Professor Castro (one author of the snuff ring) lectures to his film students. In this sense, the notion of desire constructed in the film is understood as a complex, intersecting terrain of psychological, market-driven, and sociocultural factors which generate, at once, the spectator’s libidinal desire to consume censored images, an underground market of snuff film produced in response to the demand for violence, and the gendered roles of the characters as either objects or perpetrators of this violence, among others. The demand for morbid images, in other words, exists within a market economy inseparable from the characters’ fascination with and horror for ‘real’ explicit visual material that is censored or in the case of Ángela’s research subject, conspicuous in the media. 

Notably, it is only once Ángela perceives that she is being pursued as the next victim of the snuff ring, as the very object of filmed violence which both terrifies and intrigues her, that her desire to view graphic images begins to wane, leading her to abandon her research altogether by the end of the film. Nevertheless, Ángela’s ambiguous transformation from a subject who desires to see recorded violence to become herself a target of ‘real’ violence is not entirely clear given that Amenábar constructs desire for his audience in less simplistic terms.1 Viewers are shown images of Ángela peeking through her fingers to catch a glimpse of the filmed horror that so fascinates her, an ambivalence which is evidently more complex in her character’s psychological portrait. For, Ángela also fantasises about a sexual encounter with the suspect Bosco in a disturbing dream sequence which oscillates between Ángela’s terrified resistance to her aggressor, who subdues her in bed with a suggestive phallic switchblade, and her erotic attempt held at knifepoint to seduce Bosco, which could be read as a survival tactic were it not for the director’s choice to portray this scene disturbingly with evident lust. To her horror, a dreaming Ángela realises that she is being filmed during the sex act, as an object of desire targeted for annihilation, which draws a clear parallel for the film’s viewers between woman as object in pornography and the brutal victimisation of the innocent in snuff. This parallel is furthermore reinforced by an earlier shot of the university film catalogue in which hardcore ‘pornography and other films’ (snuff) are categorised and archived together. The dream sequence, along with the late revelation that Ángela has been filmed secretly at home by her co-researcher Chema – a recording in which she caresses and kisses the image of Bosco displayed on the television screen – emphasises the perverse trappings of a desire through which Ángela’s character, unknown to the film’s audience, had demonstrated a conscious, invested sexual interest in the suspect Bosco, caught on tape. The voyeuristic recording likewise exposes her projected desire for simulacrum in the form of images (in film, television), a scene with greater social implications than Ángela’s character portrait alone. Sexual desire is played out similarly in displaced ways among other characters, in Bosco’s attempt to seduce Ángela’s unsuspecting younger sister, in Ángela’s ‘feigned’ kiss with Bosco in order to distance her sister from the suspected assassin, in the alleged jealousy of Bosco’s girlfriend towards Ángela, in Chema’s voyeuristic recording of Ángela, and even between men in Bosco and Chema’s former friendship which remained a secret to Ángela, a suspicious matter when this bond was revealed to her by Bosco’s girlfriend. 

In this sense, Ángela’s confession earlier in the film ‘I don’t like to be recorded’ echoes Amenábar’s recurrent questioning of camera vigilance and its blurred distinction between the public eye and private intimacy, whether subjects are deliberately filmed, as in these scenes, or passively recorded by the university’s security cameras which provide evidence to incriminate Ángela in the discovery of Professor Figueroa’s dead body in the auditorium. Viewers might draw an immediate comparison between the growing presence of security cameras in public space at the time of the film’s release and Amenábar’s critique of camera vigilance, both public and private. Moving beyond this initial assessment, the film also suggests that even when institutional vigilance is justified under the guise of security (i.e., mandated by the university or state), and thereby presumably void of subjective interest, a voyeuristic desire indeed underpins authority and serves to both conserve and usurp it; as viewers will remember, the closed circuit cameras incriminate Ángela, but also film Professor Castro’s suspicious lurking presence in the university film archive before Figueroa’s death. 

In its increasingly muddied distinction between the public and private, intimacy and vigilance, the film also problematises the strict separation between access to mediated (recorded or simulated) violence in the form of images and ‘real violence’ experienced in the first person.2 Viewers are reminded throughout the film that any absolute distinction between the ‘mediated’ and the ‘real’ – whether desire, violent images, or otherwise – is ultimately ungrounded. Ángela asks Chema if he has ever seen a real dead body, which gives way to two interpretations: Chema asserts that he has, in the explicit video recordings he watches with Ángela, and yet to the contrary, for Ángela audiovisual violence is not ‘real’ per se (she argues, ‘not on television, but a real dead body’). From the film’s opening sequence in a train station, in which Ángela approaches the train tracks desiring to view a ‘body split in two’ that is never actually seen (through the camera that occupies her first-person gaze), Amenábar structures the film’s imagery, and at times Ángela’s sight, through similar camerawork that seldom shows significant footage of gore, if at all.3 Instead, the characters’ horror is transmitted to the audience through shots of their expressions when viewing the snuff film and, most importantly, through the viewer’s psychological response when imagining violent images through the use of diegetic and non-diegetic sound, particularly in the victim’s chilling screams for help as she is being tortured. In fact, Amenábar’s choice not to show viewers significant violence or gore, but rather to play on the viewer’s horror by imagining this violence through sound, is perhaps most noteworthy for film students interested in Amenábar’s use of diegetic and non-diegetic sound in conjunction with the full omission of visual information (i.e. established as a motif in the opening sequence with a recorded voice-off which fades to the first frame).4 Chema and Ángela’s tense adventure into the cellar of the university archives, equipped with only a box of matches that must be lit consecutively, also plays with the audience’s ability to see only the duration of each lighted match, interspersed with shots of complete darkness which play upon the viewer’s expectations of surprise in the thriller genre. Such is the nature of Ángela’s psychological, imaginative horror when she chooses not to view the snuff film, at first, but darkens her television screen through the contrast function so that only the audio recording can be heard, which proves disturbing for her character in later scenes, as she listens obsessively to the film’s audio recording on her portable tape recorder. 

Nevertheless, it should be noted that when violent images are shown to the film’s viewers, Amenábar often chooses to demonstrate the characters’ ability to analyse them critically. For, the rapid advances in digital camera technology at the time are what lead Chema and Ángela to deduce the brand of camera used to record the snuff film, through a close analysis of the recording’s image quality, as well as the camera’s date of release and purchase, which would serve as vital information to track down Professor Castro and Bosco as leaders of the snuff ring. Chema and Ángela furthermore provide a ‘close visual reading’ of the quick jump cuts in post-production editing, which aim to delete the victim’s mention of her torturer’s name, allowing them to conclude that the victim knows her murderer. It could be argued that these two fundamental pieces of information, used to crack the case, are derived from the protagonists’ critical analysis of graphic images, providing a similar key to Amenábar’s proposal for his viewers to deconstruct their own relationship to violence with critical reflection. 

One should note that the word morbo used to describe Ángela’s ‘morbid’ desire to view extreme, violent images, is defined in Spanish as both ‘an unhealthy interest in persons or things’ and ‘an attraction to unpleasant events’. In this sense, the film’s dark reflection on spectatorship and the morbid fascination with explicit images in the media may be traced to the film’s release, contemporary to the upsurge in violence in Spanish cinema at the time, noted by Jordan and MorganTamosunas, Klodt, Moreiras-Menor and Tierney, among others, as well as the flourishing of the first private television networks in Spain in the 1990s. Summarised in the market-driven maxim of Professor Castro on the film industry, to provide viewers literally with what they most desire to see, programming in commercial television is largely dependent upon the number of viewers in a given audience share, supported by advertising spots (see Maxwell 1995). It is no surprise that Amenábar closes the film, then, with a sequence of images from a fictitious sensationalist news show, Justice and Law, whose anchor summarises the ‘unbelievable’ and ‘macabre’ story of gruesome murders of disappeared girls found on tape. Framing for her audience that it is ‘not easy for us to show these images,’ the anchor both conditions the viewer’s expectations before seeing the footage (‘and now, the images you’ve been waiting for’) and justifies the broadcast as ‘a document by itself’, unmediated and lacking critical analysis. In this final sequence, the camera shows Chema and Ángela walking through the hallway of a hospital, interspersed with images of patients fixated on the same television broadcast, a suggestive critique of a greater social desire to view violence in televised media, which is not altogether unique to Spain.5 Keeping in mind the film’s potential to question intimacy, vigilance, and the increasingly blurry distinction between the public and private – a more subtle gesture than the explicit nature of extreme violence in the film’s exploration of snuff – one could conclude in this final scene that Amenábar proposes a greater social critique of the production of and desire to consume images in a market-driven economy that jettisons ethical considerations in favour of audience share or box office revenue. In other words, the viewing audience most desires to consume, with morbid fascination, not only violence but voyeurism in which private matters are made public – the form of television programming that defines sensationalist news media and the gossip varieties of popular talk shows that turn the intimate details of private lives into spectacle-driven commodities for mass consumption. After all, perhaps summarised most disturbingly for the film’s viewers, when Ángela kisses the television screen, her secret desire for the assassin is only made public, terrifyingly and intriguingly so for the viewing audience, when caught on tape. 

Notes 

1. As Cristina Moreiras-Menor argues, ‘Lejos … de ser una película que trabaja exclusivamente en torno a la mirada fascinada del sujeto contemporáneo hacia la violencia, Tesis va más allá al exponer tanto su razón, la espectacularización masiva e indiferencia de la realidad, como su origen, la formación del sujeto y la manipulación de su mirada a la realidad a partir de procesos simbólicos de educación asentados fundamentalmente en estructuras de poder (institucionalizadas) que privilegian la espectacularización consumista del lado más sórdido de la naturaleza humana y social’ [Far … from being a film that works exclusively around the fascinated gaze of the contemporary subject towards violence, Tesis goes beyond this to expose both its raison d’être, mass spectacularization and indifference towards reality, and its origin, the formation of the subject and manipulation of the subject’s view of reality from symbolic processes of education seated fundamentally in (institutionalized) structures of power that privilege consumerist spectacularization of human and social nature’s most sordid side.] (Moreiras-Menor 2002: 260). 

2. See Dolores Tierney, ‘The Appeal of the Real in Snuff: Alejandro Amenábar’s Tesis (“Thesis”)’, Spectator – The University of Southern California Journal of Film and Television, Vol. 22, No. 2, Fall 2002, pp. 45–55. 

3. As Amenábar notes, ‘opté por el camino opuesto, mirando hacia el otro lado, a la cara de los actores, jugando con la proyección psicológica del espectador, con lo que no está viendo, con lo que se está imaginando’ [I chose the opposite route, looking the other way, at the actors’ faces, playing with the psychological projection of the viewer, with what one is not seeing, with what one is imagining.] (Marchante 2002: 59). 

4. See Dominique Russell, ‘Sounds like Horror: Alejandro Amenábar’s Thesis on AudioVisual Violence’, Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Vol. 15, No. 2, Fall 2006, pp. 81–95. 

5. See Jason E. Klodt, ‘En el fondo te gusta: Titillation, Desire, and the Spectator’s Gaze in Alejandro Amenábar’s Tesis’, Studies in Hispanic Cinemas, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2007, pp. 3–17. 

Cast and Crew:

[Country: Spain. Production Company: Las Producciones del Escorpión and SOGEPAQ. Director: Alejandro Amenábar. Executive producers: José Luis Cuerda and Emiliano Otegui. Screenwriters: Alejandro Amenábar and Mateo Gil. Cinematographer: Hans Burmann. Music: Alejandro Amenábar and Mariano Marín. Editor: María Elena Sáinz de Rozas. Cast: Ana Torrent (Ángela), Fele Martínez (Chema), Eduardo Noriega (Bosco Herranz), Xabier Elorriaga (Castro), Miguel Picazo (Figueroa), Nieves Herranz (Sena), Rosa Campillo (Yolanda).] 

Further Reading 

Barry Jordan and Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas, Contemporary Spanish Cinema, Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 1998. 

Oti Rodríguez Marchante, Amenábar, vocación de intriga, Madrid, Páginas de Espuma, 2002. 

Steven Marsh and Parvati Nair (eds), Gender and Spanish Cinema, Oxford and New York, Berg, 2004. 

Rosanna Maule, ‘Cultural Specificity and Transnational Address in the New Generation of Spanish Film Authors: The Case of Alejandro Amenábar’, in Cristina Sánchez-Conejero (ed.), Spanishness in the Spanish Novel and Cinema of the 20th-21st Century, Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars, 2007, pp. 107–20. 

Richard Maxwell, The Spectacle of Democracy: Spanish Television, Nationalism, and Political Transition, Minneapolis, MN, University of Minneapolis Press, 1995. 

Cristina Moreiras-Menor, Cultura herida: Literatura y cine en la España democrática, Madrid, Ediciones Libertarias, 2002. 

Joan Ramon Resina (ed.), Burning Darkness: A Half Century of Spanish Cinema, Albany, NY, State University of New York Press, 2008. 

Paul Julian Smith, Television in Spain, from Franco to Almodóvar, Woodbridge, UK and Rochester, New York, Tamesis, 2006. 

Source Credits:

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Films, Edited by Sarah Barrow, Sabine Haenni and John White, first published in 2015.

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Thesis (1996)

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While doing a thesis about violence, Ángela finds a snuff video where a girl is tortured until death. Soon she discovers that the girl was a former student in her faculty...

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1996, Mystery & thriller/Horror, 2h 5m

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Thesis   photos.

A Spanish film student (Ana Torrent) finds a videotape showing the torture and murder of a missing coed.

Genre: Mystery & thriller, Horror

Original Language: Spanish (Spain)

Director: Alejandro Amenábar

Producer: José Luis Cuerda

Writer: Alejandro Amenábar

Release Date (Streaming): Nov 20, 2016

Runtime: 2h 5m

Production Co: Las Producciones del Escorpión S.L., Sogepaq

Sound Mix: Dolby

Cast & Crew

Ana Torrent

Fele Martínez

Eduardo Noriega

Rosa Campillo

Miguel Picazo

Javier Elorriaga

Nieves Herranz

Olga Margallo

Alejandro Amenábar

José Luis Cuerda

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Where to watch

1996 ‘Tesis’ Directed by Alejandro Amenábar

My name is Angela. They're going to kill me.

While doing a thesis about violence, Ángela finds a snuff video where a girl is tortured until death. Soon she discovers that the girl was a former student in her faculty...

Ana Torrent Fele Martínez Eduardo Noriega Xabier Elorriaga Miguel Picazo Nieves Herranz Rosa Campillo Paco Hernández Rosa Ávila Teresa Castanedo José Miguel Caballero Joserra Cadiñanos Julio Vélez Pilar Ortega Olga Margallo José Luis Cuerda Emiliano Otegui Walter Prieto Florentino Sainz Helena Castañeda

Director Director

Alejandro Amenábar

Assistant Director Asst. Director

Producers producers.

Alejandro Amenábar José Luis Cuerda Hans Burmann María Elena Sáinz de Rozas Wolfgang Burmann Julio Madurga Ricardo Steinberg

Executive Producers Exec. Producers

José Luis Cuerda Emiliano Otegui

Writers Writers

Alejandro Amenábar Mateo Gil

Editor Editor

María Elena Sáinz de Rozas

Cinematography Cinematography

Hans Burmann

Production Design Production Design

Wolfgang Burmann

Composers Composers

Alejandro Amenábar Mariano Marín

Sound Sound

Pelayo Gutiérrez Ricardo Steinberg Nacho Royo-Villanova

Costume Design Costume Design

Makeup makeup.

Paca Almenara

Sogepaq Las Producciones del Escorpión S.L.

Releases by Date

11 apr 1996, 26 jun 1997, 22 nov 1997, 22 apr 2003, 07 oct 2009, releases by country.

• Physical 18

Netherlands

• Theatrical 16
• Physical 16 DVD

South Korea

• Theatrical 18

125 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

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Snuff movies, true-crime TV shows and other forms of violent entertainment figure heavily in restrained thriller about a film student who becomes the star in her own life-or-death drama. Newcomer Alejandro Amenabar provides an inventive plot and a sufficient supply of red herrings. Could click in the international video market with savvy handling.

By Joe Leydon

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Snuff movies, true-crime TV shows and other forms of violent entertainment figure heavily in the plot of “Thesis,” a surprisingly restrained thriller about a film student who becomes the star in her own life-or-death drama. Newcomer Alejandro Amenabar provides an inventive plot and a sufficient supply of red herrings, but fails to sustain suspense in the pic’s draggy second half. Theatrical prospects are iffy. Even so, “Thesis” could click in the international video market with savvy handling.

Ana Torrent is well cast as Angela, a Madrid film student who wants to write her thesis on violence in movies. Her faculty adviser offers to help by searching the university’s archives for violent videos. Unfortunately, he wanders into a secret storage room and picks up an unmarked videocassette, and he’s shocked into a fatal heart attack while viewing the tape.

Angela discovers her mentor dead in a university screening room. Impulsively, she steals the tape he was watching. At home, she discovers the video is a recording of the torture-murder of a co-ed who disappeared three years earlier.

Rather than alert the police, Angela decides to investigate on her own. She seeks info about violent video from an eccentric classmate, Chema (Fele Martinez), an avid fan of porno and splatter movies. He looks at the snuff video and immediately recognizes that it was shot with a special model of video camera. Just a few days later, Angela spots one of those cameras in the hands of a handsome student, Bosco (Eduardo Noriega), who just happens to know the long-missing co-ed.

Amenabar effectively develops a slow-simmering attraction between Angela and Bosco, slyly hinting that she may be drawn to him because of the danger he possibly represents. Meanwhile, Chema fumes jealously and does a great deal to arouse audience suspicion. Other prime suspects include Castro (Javier Elorriaga), Angela’s new faculty adviser; and Yolanda (Rosa Campillo), Bosco’s possessive girlfriend.

Despite some whopping improbabilities — would snuff movie producers really hide their master tapes in a university storage room? –“Thesis” generates genuine tension. Pic also manages a few pointed comments about the relationship between violence and voyeurism, particularly in a final scene that has the host of a Spanish tabloid TV show warning viewers that they’re about to see a clip from a snuff movie. The viewers appear to be raptly attentive.

Torrent manages the difficult trick of seeming intelligent even when her character does some pretty dumb things. Martinez is aptly ambiguous in his portrayal of the surly Chema.

Hans Burmann’s moody cinematography is a major asset. Other tech values are first-rate.

According to pic’s production notes, Amenabar is, at 23, the youngest feature filmmaker in Spain. It will be interesting to see whether he can fulfill the promise he displays here.

• Production: A Las Productions del Escorpion production. Produced by Jose Luis Cuerda. Executive producer, Emiliano Otegui Piedra. Directed, written by Alejandro Amenabar.
• Crew: Camera (color), Hans Burmann; editor , Maria Elena Saenz De Rozas; music, Amenabar, Mariano Marin; art direction, Wolfgang Burmann; sound (Dolby), Goldstein & Steinberg; assistant director, Walter Prieto. Reviewed at Berlin Film Festival (Panorama), Feb. 16, 1996. Running time: 125 MIN.
• With: Angela ... Ana Torrent Chema ...Fele Martinez Bosco ... Eduardo Noriega Sena ... Nieves Harranz Yolanda ... Rosa Campillo Figueroa ... Miguel Picazo Castro ... Javier Elorriaga

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Tesis (1996)

Genre: thriller / horror, duration: 125 minuten, country: spain, directed by: alejandro amenábar, stars: ana torrent , fele martínez and eduardo noriega, imdb score: 7,4  (42.235), releasedate: 11 april 1996.

"My name is Ángela. They're going to kill me." At Tesis, the passionate student Angela is looking for additional visual material for her thesis on violence on television. For her work she gets the willing help of the professor Figueroa. He's willing to do some research for lovely Angela at the university video store. The frail young lady is astonished when she finds the relevant teacher lifeless the next day in one of the projection rooms of the campus. The only thing she immediately notices is the presence of a cassette in the video monitor. Before anyone even notices, she takes the videotape home. Angela's life turns into a nerve-wracking nightmare as the tape contains shocking footage of the murder of a former college student.

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Trailer Tesis

Thesis (1996) | Eduardo Noriega Full Movie [1080p]

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Film Pegasus (moderator films)

• 30431 messages

Tesis is een moderne Hitchcock. Een stijl die velen proberen te evenaren, maar weinigen gegeven is. Zeer spannend met een plot dat je blijft doen twijfelen. Een ware who don it. En dat terwijl het verhaal gedateerd lijkt. We zijn 20 jaar later en videobanden zijn niet meer van deze tijd. De computers zijn achterhaald en met het internettijdperk zou het verhaal ook een andere aanpak hebben. Maar toch voelt het niet gedateerd aan. Omdat het als thriller gewoon werkt. De figuren zijn misschien wat houterig, maar de sfeer staat stevig recht. Achterdocht, achtervolgingen, spanning en ik vroeg me als kijker tot op het laatste moment af wie nu de dader was. Amenábar blijft me steeds verrassend overtuigen.

Tesis is a modern Hitchcock. A style that many try to emulate, but few are given. Very exciting with a plot that keeps you doubting. A true who don't. And that while the story seems dated. We are 20 years later and video tapes are no longer of this time. The computers are obsolete and with the internet age the story would also have a different approach. But it still doesn't feel dated. Because as a thriller it just works. The figures may be a bit wooden, but the atmosphere is firmly set. Suspicion, pursuits, tension and as a viewer I wondered until the last moment who the perpetrator was. Amenábar continues to convince me surprisingly.

• 5649 messages

Eigenlijk jammer dat ik nu net Abre les ojos vóór deze film zag. Tesis is een veelbelovend debuut, maar alles wat Amenábar verfijnde in Abre les ojos en met name ook The Others wil hier nog wel eens wat slordig afgerond worden. Denk bijvoorbeeld aan de scène in de club/discotheek: in ALO een hoogtepunt, hier een matig tussendoortje dat deels verpest wordt door de geluidsband. Ook het acteerwerk laat vaak te wensen over. Amenábar lijkt toch vooral bezig met het ontwikkelen van zijn eigen stijl, meer dan met de regie van zijn acteurs. De Hitchcockiaanse invloeden zijn nooit ver weg, licht en schaduw spelen een grote rol en 'de' film/het filmen zelf zijn beslissende elementen in de plot. Tesis is een soms klinische, soms uiterst sfeervolle thriller, die met name in het eerste uur de aandacht goed vast weet te houden. Later speelt de voorspelbaarheid de film danig op, en verdwijnt de intrigerende thematiek (de relatie tussen geweld en spectatorship ) menigmaal wat naar de achtergrond. Omdat Tesis de sterke laag (romantisch) drama van ALO mist, leunt de film nog sterker op de afwikkeling van motieven, kat-en muisspelletjes en de opbouw van suspense. In dat licht is de speelduur van +2 uur nét niet helemaal gerechtvaardigd, en brengt de optelsom van schoonheidsfoutjes me op een gemiddelde score. Dat alles neemt niet weg dat Tesis als debuutfilm nieuwsgierig maakt naar de verdere kunsten van Amenábar.

Too bad I just saw Abre les ojos before this movie. Tesis is a promising debut, but everything that Amenábar refined in Abre les ojos and in particular The Others can be a bit sloppy here. become. Consider, for example, the scene in the club/discotheque: in ALO a highlight, here a mediocre snack that is partly ruined by the soundtrack. The acting often leaves a lot to be desired. Amenábar seems to be mainly concerned with developing his own style, more than with the direction of his actors. The Hitchcockian influences are never far away, light and shadow play a major role and 'the' film/filming itself are decisive elements in the plot.

Tesis is a sometimes clinical, sometimes extremely atmospheric thriller, which manages to hold the attention well, especially in the first hour. Later, the predictability plays into the film, and the intriguing theme (the relationship between violence and spectatorship ) often fades into the background. Because Tesis lacks the strong layer of (romantic) drama of ALO, the film relies even more on the settlement of motifs, cat and mouse games and the building of suspense. In that light the playing time of +2 hours is just not entirely justified, and the sum of minor flaws brings me to an average score. All this does not alter the fact that Tesis as a debut film makes you curious about the further arts of Amenábar.

• 6236 messages

De obsessie met het verdorvene, het geperverteerde en het gewelddadige dat in ieder mens schuilt, is de basis voor deze film die vooral een spannende thriller is, maar die met name in de eerste helft ook zelfreflectie en discussie bij de kijker uitlokt. De kijker die een dubbele moraal hanteert. Het gedrag der gedegenereerden is afstotelijk en wordt met afschuw bekeken maar ontaarde sensatie smaakt daarnaast ook wel erg goed en wordt gretig geconsumeerd. Zonder publiek is er geen markt. En uiteindelijk krijgt het publiek wat het wil. Uitwassen fascineren en verkopen goed. Tot zover de moraal van het verhaal. Over naar de film. Een film over geweld. Over foltering. Over snuff movies. Ik verwachtte een film vol grove scènes. En dat is helemaal niet het geval. Regisseur Amenábar maakt amper gebruik van shockelementen. Hij gaat bijna vol voor de suspense. Op enige brute beelden na, valt het plastische lugubere gehalte erg mee. Het angstaanjagende, het sinistere zit ‘m vooral in de duistere sfeer en in de suspense. Spannende film. Hoofdpersonage Angela haat geweld, maar is er tegelijkertijd zo door gefascineerd dat ze er haar proefschrift aan wijdt. De film zit dicht op haar huid. Het meeste wordt vanuit haar perspectief getoond. De kijker weet steeds evenveel als Angela en wordt op die manier gedwongen mee te gaan in haar twijfels en haar angsten. Een overzichtelijke film. Met weinig verdachte personages. En toch nooit voorspelbaar. De kijker wordt voortdurend op het verkeerde been gezet. Steeds als de vraag, wie goed is en wie slecht, beantwoord lijkt, zorgt een kleine plottwist of gebeurtenis ervoor dat die visie weer moet worden bijgesteld. Hoofdrol Angela wordt er paranoïde van. De kijker ook. Tesis is een fijne duistere whodunnit en kijkt lekker weg.

The obsession with the depraved, the perverted and the violent that lurks in every human being is the basis for this film, which is primarily an exciting thriller, but which also provokes self-reflection and discussion in the viewer, especially in the first half. The viewer who uses a double standard. The behavior of the degenerates is repulsive and is viewed with horror, but degenerate sensation also tastes very good and is eagerly consumed. There is no market without an audience. And in the end, the public gets what it wants. Excrescences fascinate and sell well. So much for the moral of the story. On to the movies.

A film about violence. About torture. About snuff movies. I expected a movie full of rough scenes. And that is not the case at all. Director Amenábar hardly uses shock elements. He goes almost full for the suspense. Apart from some brutal images, the plastic lugubrious quality is not too bad. The frightening, the sinister is mainly in the dark atmosphere and in the suspense.

Exciting film. Main character Angela hates violence, but at the same time is so fascinated by it that she is dedicating her thesis to it. The film is close to her skin. Most of it is shown from her perspective. The viewer always knows as much as Angela and is thus forced to go along with her doubts and fears.

A clear movie. With few suspicious characters. And yet never predictable. The viewer is constantly misled. Whenever the question of who is good and who is bad seems answered, a small plot twist or event causes that view to be adjusted again. Leading role Angela becomes paranoid. The viewer too.

Tesis is a nice dark whodunnit and looks nice.

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Film review: tesis (1996).

Phil Russell 07/10/2020 Extreme Cinema , Film Reviews

Angela (Ana Torrent), is a grad student writing her thesis on violent video. She gets in contact with Chema (Fele Martinez), a long haired horror geek who takes her home and introduces her to his collection of gore tapes. He plays her a mondo movie calle ‘Fresh Blood’, which shows a dead body having its brain removed. Angela’s professor has access to the university’s private video library, and he promises to have a look through the archives to locate the most gruesome and p*rnographic films to help her in her studies. After browsing the shelves in the enormous deserted library, he plays one of the videos in a closed-off screening room… Angela later finds him dead in his seat, presumably of a chronic asthma attack. But what on earth was he watching that could cause him to keel over like that? Angela removes the tape from the machine and watches it at home. She’s hesitant at first, making sure she plays it with the contrast level turned down to a minimum so that she doesn’t have to see what’s happening on screen; but the sounds of a woman’s tortured cries are enough to convince her that the contents of the tape are far from pretty, and could in fact be a genuine snuff film. She shows the tape to her horror geek buddy, Chema, and he confirms it is real. The tape depicts a young woman tied to a chair being beaten and butchered with a circular saw by a man wearing a balaclava. Chema recognises the victim as a girl who disappeared from the campus two years previously. This odd couple then take it upon themselves to investigate…

Directed by Alejandro Amenabar Starring: Ana Torrent, Fele Martinez Original title: Tesis

After this superb initial set-up, the film descends into a silly thriller in which the sleuths are followed by the murderers who made the tape. And with only two possible culprits at hand, the film flits between the suspects, back and forth, and ruins any chances of having a surprise ending. As a whole, Tesis is not really gritty or graphic enough for my liking. It’s way too clean-cut and streamlined to truly disturb its audience. It serves as really nothing more than a calling card for director Amenabar, who predictably went on to such mainstream tosh as the Turn of The Screw rip-off, The Others, and the Penelope Cruz vehicle, Open Your Eyes. And like those later films, Thesis has a distinctive ‘play-it-safe’ vibe about it, as though the filmmakers were trying to secure an international hit at any cost, and were absolutely dead-set against including anything in the film that may have ruined its chances of sending the director on to a career in Hollywood. The snuff thriller was done much better – and more plausibly – in Anthony Waller’s superb Mute Witness (1994), and just like Amenabar, Waller also went on to a career in Hollywood, and delivered the lacklustre sequel, An American Werewolf In Paris, of which the less spoken about the better.

Angela’s character is a bit wishy-washy; she’s supposed to be writing a thesis on video violence, but acts as though she’s never seen a horror movie in her life. She has a sort of doe-eyed innocence about her, more suited to watching Disney movies than fictional mondo vids like ‘Fresh Blood’. If she ever saw Men Behind The Sun or Snuff 102 she’d shit her own guts out. Chema is better as a character, the horror geek whose jaded sensibilities allows him to identify the poor butchered girl, meaning he can watch the tape over and over like a detached criminologist, as a way of piecing together the clues needed to track down the culprits. But even he is annoyingly obnoxious at times. His abnormal facial hair is annoying too; like a piece of shredded wheat pathetically trying to mimic Fidel Castro. And with his grungy plaid shirt and long hair and glasses, he looks like fellow horror geek, Mark Borchardt, from the excellent documentary American Movie: The Making of North Western, which incidentally, was made around the same time as Thesis .

The film’s plus points are quite subtle; the first half hour or so has a gripping build-up, but soon fizzles out. There is also an underlying theme present concerning the scoptophiliac nature of moviegoers and of human nature in general: The opening scene sees Angela arriving at the station on a train. The conductor announces that a man has committed suicide by throwing himself in front of the train, and urges passengers not to look at the track as they leave. While she walks on the platform, Angela seems troubled; she doesn’t want to look at the dead body on the track, but at the same time she can’t help herself – the desire to look and feast her eyes on the tragedy is too great for her… Later on, there’s the scene where Chema watches the tape at his apartment – While Chema stares unflinchingly at the screen in an almost clinically detached manner, Angela stands at the back of the room with her hands covering her eyes. But while she’s doing this, she can’t help but take a horrified peek through the gaps of her fingers. By standing as far away from the screen as possible, she hopes to distance herself, both physically and emotionally, from the shocking imagery, but of course this doesn’t work, and those images are burned into her memory forever. An idea many horror fans will be able to relate to.

Tesis (1996)

Tags Alejandro Amenábar Ana Torrent Eduardo Noriega Fele Martínez Halálos tézis Miguel Picazo mute witness open your eyes snuff thriller spanish giallo spanish horror Tesis The Others Thesis Xabier Elorriaga

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Thesis (1996) Movie Review

Last updated on September 18th, 2023 by Mighil

I still clearly remember the first time I watched Alejandro Amenabar’s 1996 thriller Thesis over a decade ago. As a young film buff in my early 20s, I always sought lesser-known films to expand my cinematic horizons beyond the typical Hollywood blockbusters. A friend recommended the Thesis to me, praising its clever story and ability to keep viewers guessing until the end.

Since then, Thesis has stayed with me as one of those boundary-pushing films that doesn’t shy away from exploring morally gray areas and asking difficult questions.

While revisiting it recently, I was struck by how well it has held up and how ahead of its time it seemed in some respects. Though not a perfect film, Thesis proved to be a thought-provoking and suspenseful 2.5-hour experience that has earned its place in my film canon.

The story follows Angela, a film student writing her Thesis on violence in the media. In her research, she comes across an unidentified snuff film depicting the real murder and torture of a young woman. Her investigation into the disturbing footage pulls her down a dark rabbit hole, putting her own life in danger.

Director Amenabar sets an instantly unsettling tone with the film’s opening scene, where onlookers gather grimly around a suicide victim on train tracks but can’t look away from the gruesome sight.

From there, he masterfully builds an intense psychological thriller that keeps the viewer guessing what’s real and what’s not. The young cast, led by a believable turn from Ana Torrent as Angela, helps ground the story in realism. They sell the characters’ curiosity, fear, and moral dilemma around exposing themselves to such extreme violence on screen. The gloomy Madrid settings also aid in cultivating an ominous atmosphere throughout.

The film truly succeeds in its willingness to intelligently take on difficult questions about violence, consent, and human nature rather than offering easy answers. Amenabar doesn’t stop depicting human curiosity’s visceral, dark side, showing how even well-adjusted people can be drawn to the taboo and forbidden. Characters acknowledge that watching violence, even non-consensually, could make one complicit in some way.

At the same time, he doesn’t condemn viewership as a sign of sickness either. The complex themes gave me much to think about regarding society’s fraught relationship with representing violence and death on screen. I appreciate that the film invited discussion rather than preaching. We must acknowledge humans as flawed beings capable of good and evil rather than reducing them to one-dimensional stereotypes.

While the final confrontation wraps up a bit too neatly for my tastes, I didn’t feel the ending undermined the thought-provoking nature of the film up to that point. On revisit, I noticed clever foreshadowing and connections between characters I had missed the first time. The mystery element remains compelling thanks to Amenabar’s skillful misdirection.

Of course, no film is perfect, and Thesis has flaws. The slow pace may test viewer patience at some points. Certain character actions also don’t always hold up to scrutiny. However, these minor gripes didn’t stop me from enjoying the atmospheric journey or engaging with the cerebral themes at the story’s core.

Ultimately, I can see why Thesis has garnered a cult following among genre fans and remains a seminal work from Amenabar. It proves that scary movies don’t need buckets of gore or explosions to unnerve – sometimes, a thought-provoking psychological approach can be much more disturbing.

While not redefining cinema, the Thesis is a gritty example of how the medium can start important conversations if filmmakers push creative boundaries. It’s a film I keep returning to every few years, and I always find new things to appreciate.

Movie Rating: 3.5/5 Note: 3 is the median. Anything above 3 is a recommended watch.

Written by Mighil — Mighil is an indie musician and tinkerer with diverse work experience in technology and writing. He has had the privilege of serving in various capacities, encompassing generalist and specialist roles. He is currently based in Chengdu.

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Tesis (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Different stars.

• 1 Alejandro Amenabar Títulos Iniciales 1:26
• 2 Alejandro Amenabar Figueroa 1:17
• 3 Alejandro Amenabar Míralo Otra Vez 1:18
• 4 Alejandro Amenabar Bosco 2:26
• 5 Alejandro Amenabar Persecución 3:17
• 6 Alejandro Amenabar Sueño 3:29
• 7 Alejandro Amenabar Investigando 1:08
• 8 Alejandro Amenabar Castro 1:57
• 9 Alejandro Amenabar Snuff 1:29
• 10 Alejandro Amenabar La Princesa y el Enano 5:48
• 11 Alejandro Amenabar Beso en la Discoteca 0:41
• 12 Alejandro Amenabar El Parque 0:44
• 13 Alejandro Amenabar Ángela Encuentra la Cámara 2:08
• 14 Alejandro Amenabar La Casa de Bosco 2:04
• 15 Alejandro Amenabar Pelea en la Cocina 1:19
• 16 Alejandro Amenabar El Garaje 1:17
• 17 Alejandro Amenabar Me Van a Matar 1:13
• 18 Alejandro Amenabar El Hospital 1:05
• 19 Alejandro Amenabar Títulos Finales 2:33
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(The) director Alejandro Amenábar balances actual, terrifying visuals with Hitchcockian red herrings for one of the best debut films in years. The...

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Film / Tesis

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"My name is Ángela. They are going to kill me."

Tesis ("Thesis") is a 1996 Spanish thriller film.

It tells the story of Ángela, a film student working on her college thesis about violence in movies. When her tutor dies watching a Snuff Film in a secret room of the university's library, Ángela hides the film and enlists the help of Chema, a strange boy in her class with an interest in gore. The appearance of another, enigmatic student named Bosco and the entry of her new tutor will further complicate things, as Ángela tries to uncover the author of the mysterious video.

Tesis was director Alejandro Amenábar's first movie, made while he was himself in college, and was written by Amenabar and Mateo Gil. The movie won seven Goya Awards in 1996, including the award for Best Film, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Director. It stars Ana Torrent as Ángela, Fele Martínez as Chema, and Eduardo Noriega as Bosco.

Tropes that apply to this movie:

• Accidental Murder : Chema kills Castro while trying to disarm him. This convinces him more about not going to police, since he thinks they will just treat him and Ángela as murderers.
• Adults Are Useless : Played with . Ángela flees into a room and closes the door when she sees Bosco at home, presuming that he has broken into. Cue her mother walking in to tell her that she has been talking to her "friend" and he's been waiting for her for a while. However, Ángela never tells her mother anything bad about him, so she cannot be faulted for thinking nothing of him.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys : Ángela is obviously attracted to Bosco from the beginning, despite being introduced to him as a possible Serial Killer of young women, and refuses to report her suspicions until she's sure he's not innocent.
• Alone with the Psycho / I Have You Now, My Pretty : Happens twice to Ángela. First with Castro , before Chema saves her, and then with Bosco .
• Annoying Younger Sibling : Ángela's younger sister nonchalantly blurts the theme of her thesis to Bosco, which makes him easily deduce why Ángela was tailing him, and later goes on a date with him.
• An Arm and a Leg : The killer saws the limbs of his victims while they are alive.
• Asthma Peril : Angela's advisor Figueora dies of an asthma attack caused by the violent horrors he saw on the snuff tape, and provides Angela with her motive to keep looking for whoever filmed it.
• Subverted when it's revealed that he owns the same type of camera .
• Ax-Crazy : Bosco and Castro are both this. They're sadistic and psychopatic killers who loves to tortures and then slaughter woman while filming the act.
• Beard of Evil : Castro has the fullest and best trimmed beard of all characters in the film.
• Big Bad Duumvirate : Bosco and Castro are the main perpetrators of the snuff movies. The former is the masked killer who tortures and butchers the women while the latter is the one filming the scene.
• Betty and Veronica : Chema and Bosco for Ángela, though she presumably ends with neither.
• Boom, Headshot! : The killer finishes his victims with a shot in the mouth before they can die of their injuries as ends happening to the killer himself.
• Brown Note : Ángela's first tutor dies of a heart attack while watching the film. Ángela takes it, but she's reluctant to watch at first and only listens to it.
• Chekhov's Gun : The knife Ángela takes from Bosco's kitchen later saves her from him .
• Cold-Blooded Torture : The killer aims to inflict as much pain as possible before killing his victims. That includes hitting them in the head with a hammer and cutting their limbs with a hacksaw, among other things.
• Dating Catwoman : Ángela is attracted to Bosco, which he exploits right to the end when he tries to distract her by asking the color of his eyes, in an attempt to grab the gun out of her hands.
• Death by Irony / Karmic Death : At the end, Bosco unwittingly records his own death by gunshot in the same place, with the same camera, and with the same gun that he used to commit his murders, and at least part of it is shown on TV for everyone to see.
• Evil Gloating : Both Castro and Bosco go on tirades about what they want to do with Ángela after she uncovers them. Justified ; as snuff filmmakers, they want to scare their victims as much as possible.
• Face Death with Dignity : Though obviously scared beforehand, Angela doesn't sob or try to bargain after she's tied to the killer's chair.
• Gory Discretion Shot : The Snuff Film within the movie is never really shown, only a few glimpses and shots of people reacting to it.
• Ángela starts following Bosco after she sees him with the camera type used to make the snuff movies. He notices and turns back, then starts following Ángela when she tries to act like she wasn't.
• See Death by Irony / Karmic Death above.
• Hypocrite : Ángela is very vocal about her dislike for violence and her disgust for anyone who revels in it, yet every time there's something really violent she can't help herself but to look, and she records the screams from the Snuff Film to listen to them. The film uses this to underline that, regardless of how much society reviles violence, it is inevitably attracted to it.
• MacGuffin : The Snuff Film that 'kills' Ángela's teacher.
• Nightmare Fetishist : Ángela, who tries to look at the dead body at the station and is writing her thesis about violence in film; Chema, who has gore and violent videos and a house decorated with monster motifs; Castro and Bosco, who film snuff movies .
• Police Are Useless : Chema and Ángela refuse to report anything to police until the movie is over. The university's security guards are useless too, leaving without checking on Ángela's first tutor and not realizing he is dead, despite having a security camera on the projection room.
• Poor Communication Kills : Chema can only spell the word "garage" when he tries to warn Ángela about Bosco . This leads Ángela to said garage, where she discovers that it is the place used to film the murders, and she is immediately taken prisoner.
• Psycho Psychologist : Castro is the ringleader of the Snuff film business, responsible of the torture and death of 16 girls. He is also is a Psycologist, and teacher of Audiovisual Psycology. He also advises the students to become sold-offs! . Many people celebrated his death in the cinemas with cheers and joy!
• Red Herring : Ángela discovers that Chema lied about not knowing Bosco beforehand, that he has the camera type used in the murders in his closet, and that he has been following and filming her while she investigated the case without her consent. He's not involved in the crimes.
• Ripped from the Headlines : An obvious take on the 1992 disappearances and murders of the Alcasser Girls, just moved to a film school, and the Conspiracy Theory that they were abducted by snuff movie makers in particular. Similarities include the killer talking about sawing a hand and finishing with a headshot, which was said to have happened to Miriam García (in reality, the hand's bones had been dislocated during decomposition and left accidentally at the scene), and Ángela fearing for her young sister when she sees her talking to Bosco in a disco (the Girls disappeared when they were going to one). Finally, the ending has the people looking forward to Bosco 's death on TV, an obvious reference to the unprecedented exposure and sensationalism of the Alcasser case in the media.
• Serial Killer : The epilogue reveals that Bosco murdered 16 girls and buried them in his property.
• Sibling Rivalry : Played with. Ángela fears for her sister when she sees her talking to Bosco at a disco, but can't share the reasons with her... so she kisses Bosco in front of her.
• Snuff Film : The MacGuffin of the movie.
• Nice Guy : Chema, in contrast to the alluring bad boy Bosco.
• No Social Skills : Chema isn't the most diplomatic person around.
• Stalker with a Crush : Ángela's crush on Bosco doesn't seem very healthy at the end of the movie, and Chema is also one of these, with him stalking Ángela and filming her in her home .
• The Sociopath : The person who filmed the Snuff Film , namely Bosco, and also Castro .
• Take That! : Jorge Castro is famously based in one of Amenábar's college teachers, Antonio Castro, whom Amenábar claimed made him fail his exams due to disagreements. Notably, Antonio fired back at Amenábar in an interview and revealed that the latter never bothered to attend his exams (which Amenábar retorted by claiming he would have surely failed him).
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome : Noriega's Bosco. Not surprising that Ángela develops a crush on him (or that he fully uses it to his advantage).
• Treacherous Advisor : Castro to Ángela. Chema is also discovered to have been hiding information from Ángela and suspected of being the killer at one point, but he genuinely wants to help her.
• The most common criticism of the movie is how stupid it is for the killer to store the snuff movies in a room college library where anyone can walk in at any moment. The whole movie would not have happened if only Castro or Bosco had kept the copies safe in their property.
• Bosco traps Ángela and ties her to a chair, yet misses that she has a literal knife up her sleeve , allowing her to escape.
• We Used to Be Friends : Ángela discovers that Bosco and Chema knew each other beforehand and share an old photo.
• Will They or Won't They? : Ángela flip-flops during the movie between believing Bosco innocent and wanting to clear my name and believing he's the killer and wanting nothing with him because of that .
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Thesis (1996)

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Certification

• Sex & Nudity (3)
• Violence & Gore (2)
• Profanity (1)
• Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking (1)
• Frightening & Intense Scenes (1)

Sex & Nudity

• Mild 14 of 33 found this mild Severity? None 5 Mild 14 Moderate 10 Severe 4 We were unable to submit your evaluation. Please try again later.
• Full female nudity but not in a sexual manner. Edit
• In a brief sexual scene, a man walks into a room approaching a woman on the bed, slowly pointing a knife on her neck. Then, the woman kiss and licks his hand. He kisses her lips passionately and kiss her lower body to her privates. Then, the camera cuts to her face. We see her moaning with pleasure. Edit
• A man and a woman kiss passionately at a nightclub. Later, we see them kissing outside while laying on the grounds. Edit

Violence & Gore

• Severe 15 of 21 found this severe Severity? None 0 Mild 1 Moderate 5 Severe 15 We were unable to submit your evaluation. Please try again later.
• There are many scenes of torture snuff very graphic and realistic, in addition to sexual abuse. Edit
• The beginning of the film features many scenes from a mondo film which are incredibly graphic. This includes people getting beaten, people being shot in the head, etc. Although these scenes are short, they are very graphic. Edit
• Moderate 10 of 22 found this moderate Severity? None 0 Mild 10 Moderate 10 Severe 2 We were unable to submit your evaluation. Please try again later.
• Some swearing and insults. Edit

Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking

• Mild 15 of 19 found this mild Severity? None 2 Mild 15 Moderate 2 Severe 0 We were unable to submit your evaluation. Please try again later.
• Use of chloroform and any other drug (certainly tobacco and/or alcohol). Edit

Frightening & Intense Scenes

• Severe 13 of 18 found this severe Severity? None 1 Mild 2 Moderate 2 Severe 13 We were unable to submit your evaluation. Please try again later.
• There are many bloody and disturbing scenes of torture snuff, as well as scenes of strong suspense and tension. There are some scares and a peculiarly tense and claustrophobic up scene for some. Edit

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