8MM begins very well as a nouveau noir. Cage, as private detective Tom Welles, is hired by a dowager who has discovered a one-of-a-kind 8mm snuff film among her late husband's belongings. She wants to know if the girl who is apparently killed in course of the privately made S&M porno reel is still alive. . . . The idea of snuff films is presented as so obnoxious that it disgusts even the slimiest porn peddlers. This doesn't stop Schumacher from teasing us with one, nor does it stop there. 8MM voyeuristically wallows in the sadistic violence it professes to deplore.
