Snuff Corporation On a rather busy highway, a certain person runs panicky, packed to the lower part of the body in a black garbage bag, neatly wrapped in white tape (for aestheticism clearly), fleeing from the pursuers who are invisible for the time being, who nevertheless overtake him and take him back to themselves. The change of frame, which is accompanied by a weak multifocal defocus: a young girl of an unhealthy appearance wakes up at an unfinished residential area. Recovering from memory everything that happened to her and simultaneously experiencing persecution from some ultra-cruel killer, this failed actress of small forms and great ambitions will learn about the existence of the underground snuff industry, and, most likely, still play her best and last role there.
When viewing the second full-length work of the little-known Argentine horror underground Marcelo Leguiza, the film “Smile” in 2012, there is an inevitable feeling of a certain déjà vu, because one thing is certain: Leguiza, when creating “Smile”, chose the tape of his countryman Mariano Peralta “Snuff 102” as the main landmark, filming, however, not without philosophical load, pseudo-snuff and not the author’s comment on the topic of the incredible attractiveness of violence in the obscene language of this violence with an obvious prefix, but a full-fledged film about the film industry. A kind of "Hostel", played without any irony or erotica, Sinefil horror about horror, decided compositionally so that the film for a long time successfully manages to pretend to be almost a pure-blooded slasher, where everything by definition is simple, stupid and understandable, since there are significant differences from the rest of the host of this type of horror genre. First of all, the victim is not inclined to behave throughout the picture exclusively as a victim, while her anonymous stalker in a rubber mask of a spherical emoji-deviant kills right and left everyone who he comes across, and not only a priori stereotyped idiotized youth. Side murders, however, in the picture at the same time is extremely small, and for quite a long time "Smile" is a catchy game for survival with completely unexplained goals of the masked, cosplaying his appearance cult wrestler Santo.
But the closer the denouement, the more “Smile” ceases to be the notorious slasher, when the screen begins to permanently change its color digital coloring to monochrome, and in the narrative arena there are new-born dealers of underground cinema. With its philosophy, with its cinematic tricks and a whole collection of spicy bloody video, where it is not the essence of who is sewn, but it is extremely important how and in what quantities, qualities and scenery, the more so that even such an anti-kino should nevertheless remain a movie, and please not only the perversive beauty of real murder, but also the spectacular construction of the frame, the correct choice of the victim and the gifted catharsis (well, or orgasm). Changing film-language methods in the framework of one film, Leguise in essence in Smile emphasizes the absolute fictionality of the entire further blood bath, just as Peralta showed to the end of his creation that the local anti-kino, tied in one way or another to reality, carries only the utilitarian function of any horror film that claims little to communicate, beating on relevance expressively and transgressively. Antikino is transformed into a metakino, in which the director is looking for himself, first identifying with the victim, and then with the cinema maniacs-synephags; if in his debut, the film Radioactive Interplanetary Marijuana 2010, Leguise was inspired by the thrash fiction of the 50s and the aesthetics of Troma, and his third tape Kv62 2013 objectively repelled from the avant-garde, then Smile only demonstrates the director’s search for his themes, the development of his styles. Definitely the right course, because the underground is completely free from any restrictions. Do what you want. . .
For your entertainment.