Reality Killers (2005) begins with a caption which reads, “This film was mailed to us by an anonymous sender” and the viewer will instantly understand why, as the whole shebang is set up to be a whistle-stop tour of a very twisted individual’s collection of snuff videos. And, according to the IMDb summary, what follows is a series of candid vignettes of horrific intensity which will test the nerves of even the most hardened of horror fans.
Alessandro Capone’s movie serves as an interesting offshoot of my That’s Nasty! series, because it’s a movie which was refused a certificate by the BBFC in July 2024 and hence there’s no UK release from Treasured Films. The film itself is from 2005 and the fact that a two decades-old work caused such a level of consternation at the classification board that it received an outright ban lit up my “ban this sick filth” radar, naturally. As with all films coming a cropper at the BBFC, the overriding question is one of whether the moral and ethical panic is justified.
In the case of Reality Killers, I would say yes and no, not to be contrary or confusing, but because the content is generally much tamer than you’d expect in a movie which has been deemed unsuitable for the British public to view. It’s certainly nasty in concept, but the violence is often carried out just outside the frame or the footage goes blurry at the crucial moment, leaving most of the bloody stuff to shots of the gruesome aftermath. Looking at this from a gore standpoint, there’s far gnarlier stuff out there in mainstream horror flicks, but that clearly isn’t the issue here.
Apart from a very brief flashback which hints at why our central character developed such an unhealthy interest in murder, much of Reality Killers is a procession of threat and torture, with no specific narrative other than watching terrified folks die for dubious entertainment. Despite our collector cutting in at various points to tell us just how excited he is to see all of this carnage play out, the overall effect is numbing.
Shorn of any build up or context, the segments soon become repetitive, despite the differing locations, victims and filming styles. A genuinely effective found footage movie such as Cannibal Holocaust still possesses an incredible power to shock, because we’ve spent time with the protagonists and we’re allowed time for just how hideous they are to sink in before they commit the most appalling atrocities. Here, we have to assume these people are psychos and it’s straight to the destruction, without any framework or backstory to pique the interest.
The BBFC definitely weren’t keen on the lack of counterbalance present in the seventy-five minutes of sadism on display here and, as anti-ban as I am, I can’t say that I disagree with them on this point. Watching folks being abused and ultimately killed over and over again without much in the way of justification is, to be frank, thoroughly depressing and I’m not entirely sure who would genuinely get a kick out of watching this. It’s not truly unpleasant enough to be transgressive, but it’s too focused on obvious button-pushing for it to gain any traction with discerning genre fans.
As to whether Reality Killers could have gained that all important 18 certificate with cuts, any film editor would be confronted with the issue of what you could possibly remove without the remaining action resembling a short. Much of the violence is brief and it’s the emphasis on human suffering that isn’t easily diluted. There’s also an undercurrent of sexual threat in many of the attacks and, despite those elements not being particularly explicit, the combination of sex and violence has always been a sensitive issue for the BBFC and the lack of reassuring resolutions – few of the killers are caught – sets it in a precarious position when considering its fitness for home viewing.
As for “testing the nerves of even the most hardened of horror fans”, I don’t think it particularly tested mine and that’s coming from someone who doesn’t see himself as a hardened horror fan. More often than not, regardless of the fact that some of the sequences are decently shot and the acting isn’t terrible, I was fighting off boredom for long stretches of this. A handful of the short, sharp shocks, such as the bloodless but chilling drowning of a child, are effective, but too many of the reels suffer from over-ripe dialogue and cartoony villains. The biggest offender in this regard is, inevitably, our masked, breathy narrator, who displays such ridiculous, edgelord behaviour that I was rolling my eyes at a couple of points. I get it, you’re evil.
Reality Killers saves its most potent image for the very end, complete with wince-provoking practical effects work, but how many of us are going to make it to that point? Even at just an hour and a quarter, it’s an endurance test and not in the way that, say, a Guinea Pig movie would be. As a twisted take on a portmanteau film, it doesn’t present the requisite variety of tales that would make it work. If it’s to be touted as an item in the extreme horror sphere, it isn’t especially extreme.
And yet, it could all have been a very different, and more contentious, addition to the genre. The final cut of Reality Killers is far different to how it was previously envisaged, initially created as a bizarre game show featuring serial killers and then ditching that premise for a story which centred around a law enforcement officer discovering a cache of snuff movies, one of which featured The Sculptor, the character who became the main protagonist when the law enforcement and investigation angle was also dumped.
The surviving production footage of this jettisoned version is present on the Treasured Films Blu-Ray, including fewer reality killers, but providing far more background detail and a vital, if fleeting, sense of justice as we see most of the perpetrators apprehended and, in the case of the Demon Soldiers episode, appearing in court. In this rough cut, the violence is also drawn out and arguably much more disturbing, particularly in the opening section, which includes some gross post-mortem business that the BBFC would have removed in the blink of an eye.
The project itself is a fascinating one, with Capone given overall directing credit due to his overall mentoring of several fledgling filmmakers brought on board to create their own specific slices of the story as well as helming some of the scenes himself. Of course, you don’t get to know who worked on this because it’s a collection of “real life” murders and hence there are no credits either at the beginning or end. I get that, but it’s a shame that no one gets the kudos, albeit dubious kudos, of contributing to this. There is creativity on display, but most of it is obliterated by the relentless tinkering in the editing suite. If this is an artistic choice to make it all feeling unfocused and unfinished, fair play, but it also has the effect of coming across as a movie that doesn’t know what it wants to be. The story of the making and post-production of Reality Killers is way more interesting than what’s on screen, and that’s unfortunate.