Tape Me is a movie that I saw a review about, and that made me curious. I think there was even a trailer involved in the review. I’m not really sure, but I think that is what made it so appealing to me. That, and of course, the review was very well written and positive.
Let’s be honest and say that this is an underground movie, and that the acting, at least in the first part of it, is shifting in quality. Some of the actors and actresses are really quite good, while others, well, they’re not convincing. I think, as we go along, though, the acting gets better. I think that what I had against it in the very beginning was more the ability to be convincing while not in a horrifying situation. What I found, when the killer—the masked killer—is particularly gruesome and sadistic, is that the fear in the actors or actresses goes through the screen very well.
And speaking about the killer, I think that the mask is really great. That is usually the case when it comes to slasher kind of movies. I’m not sure that this will be categorized as a slasher, though. It certainly has some elements, and the mask enhances that, of course. However, the modus operandi around the killer is not typical slasher. There seems to be more vengeance and punishments, at least to begin with. Maybe you could say it’s somewhere in the cross lines between Saw and a regular slasher.
At least, that was what I thought at the beginning. But then, later on, when I thought it was established that the killer only killed and punished those who really deserved it, I seem to have been wrong. Later on, there are also situations where I believe—or my conviction—that not only the guilty or deserving are punished. I think we see deviation from that, of course. That makes us also identify on another level with a victim, and that, in turn, makes us more revolted, I would say. Because, of course, we see ourselves as innocent. For that reason, we are not thinking that this is deserved.
So, that creates a bond between us, the viewers, and the victims. Whatever happens on the screen, we feel empathy, and it’s not only entertainment violence or what you call it.
I do think that the killings, or the violent scenes, are somewhat repetitive. And even though the killing methods are really gruesome and sometimes very inventive, I feel a bit robbed of the experience. It seems to be the same pattern repeating itself over and over again, and that is kind of a shame. That’s not true for the movie in its entirety though. The further towards the end we come, the less repetition.
Somewhere along the way, Tape Me also becomes kind of a serial killer movie, where the victims are found and the police are somehow making the dots between them. I guess that they bear kind of the same pattern of injuries, even though they are killed in very different ways, and all of them are not even killed. There are other horrifying circumstances surrounding a few of them. There are survivors, and they have horrifying tales to tell too.
And the interesting thing is that we, as an audience, don’t know who the killer is. We see a mask, and the person behind the mask doesn’t really speak, except for one instance, I think. We actually hear the voice at one occasion. It kind of sounded male, but I’m not totally sure. And if you look at the stans and the body type, it looks male—but not really, really sure. The mask itself seems to have female traits though.
Anyway, it would be kind of fun if the killer were female, because that is highly unusual, especially when it comes to this gruesome kind of killings. I mean, the typical thing for a killer of this magnitude is to be male, and it would be fun if they play with the gender roles a bit, so things turn up in a different way.
