“8MM” is a thriller that has clearly been made by talented individuals. However, its content and the subject matter in general make this an unpleasant watch. I respect that craftsmanship but essentially, we’re looking at a really ugly and vile picture. It’s basically “Se7en” meets “Videodrome”.

A wealthy widow discovers a violent and disturbing film in her late husband’s safe. She decides to hire private investigator Tom Welles (Nicolas Cage “Con Air”, “Adaptation”) to verify whether or not the film is real. Welles is tasked with exploring the murky underworld of pornography in his hunt for a snuff film ring that might not even exist.

Cage does a good job as Welles. During the early parts of the film, he sees this as just a job but he eventually sees this as a form of crusade as he desperately tries to find the girl in the film (or at least find out what happened to her). Joaquin Phoenix (“Joker”, “Her”), James Gandolfini (“The Drop”, “In The Loop”) and Peter Stormare (“Fargo”, “The Big Lebowski”) all appear as people involved in some way in the pornography industry. Many of the characters Welles encounters are perverts at best and downright evil at worst. I disliked Welles’ family in this as their scenes feel unnecessary.

“8MM” is a disturbing movie with lots of nudity, realistic violence and mature themes throughout. It was surprisingly directed by Joel Schumacher, who directed the laughably bad “Batman & Robin” just a few years earlier. If you really like “Se7en”, “Silence of the Lambs”, “The Bone Collector” and other similar movies then you will probably enjoy “8MM”. However, I just find a lot of these films to just be really unpleasant to sit through. Some of the imagery in here is sickening and while I admire aspects of the movie, I cannot come remotely close to recommending it.