8mm - 1999

 There are those iconic movies from youth that you remember forever, and for me this is one of them.  I'm using youth in the broad definition since this came out when I was 13, but I definitely remember this from some time close to then, I do not remember exactly when I first saw it.

8mm was one of those movies that you heard people talking about in that reverulatory way, the way people talked about Se7en and Silence of the Lambs.  They would whisper about its darkness, scariness, it's moral depravity.  I saw it, loved it, and have watched it many times and probably introduced people to it.  But like many things on this bog that are a rewatch, it's been years, minimally 10, since I have watched this movie.

Its also strange that this movie has had very little legacy.  Now, there was a straight to DVD sequel 6 years later, but I would think with the popularity of true crime and such, this could easily be translated into a TV show.  But it's more than that, its that this movie doesn't get talked about much, from what I see.  People name drop American Psycho more than this, and that movie came out later than 8mm.  

Nicolas Cage stars as private investigator Tom Welles, who is called in to investigate a supposed snuff film that was found in the private collection of a dead man.  He begins the hunt looking for the girl who is shown being killed in the video, and that leads him on a long and dark journey into the past as well as into the netherworld of underground pornography and the weirdos involved.  Along the way he meets Joaquin Phoenix as Max California, a grungy deadbeat who works at a porn store and helps him.

There's a lot of truly creepy shit in this movie, which is why I find it strange that this isn't as talked about as other stuff.  This was Andrew Kevin Walker's follow up to Se7en, and while I guess you could say that his career overall never achieved the heights of Se7en again, this is a really cool follow up that people who like dark movies should be talking about. 

Another thing that's certain is that this movie simply stinks of the year 1999.  I have been watching a lot of movies from that year, trying to find what is the most "1999" movie, and this is up there is it's nihilist, audacious slime.  Apparently, it is way less dark than what Walker had written, which makes me wonder, how crazy and dark was this originally?  Its a great rewatch, I'll give it 4 stars.