Director – Mitchell Altieri, Screenplay – Mitchell Altieri, Cory Knauf & Adam Weis, Story – The Butcher Brothers & Cory Knauf, Producers – Adam Blake Carver, Luke Edwards & Cory Knauf, Photography – Amanda Treyz, Music – Kevin Kerrigan, Visual Effects Supervisor – Oren Kaplan, Special Effects/Makeup – Jamie Richmond, Production Design – Micah Embry. Production Company – North Fork Productions/Butcher Brothers/Indie Entertainment.
Cast
Joey Kern (Dresden Winters), Luke Edwards (Dominic Winters), Bree Williamson (Jennifer Sellers), Perry Laylon Ojeda (Jorge), Brad Greenquist (Kenneth Kennedy)
Plot
Brothers Dresden and Dominic Winters have come to Los Angeles to try and make it as actors but have had no success so far. Behind on the rent, they decide to enter a horror movie-making competition. Dresden’s idea is to win the competition by making a snuff movie. They hold auditions where Dominic is attracted to actress Jennifer Sellers and they decide to hire her. Dresden argues that they need to make their film seem as though it a real snuff movie. And so they break into Jennifer’s apartment, abduct her and imprison her in a warehouse where they proceed to torture her, making her think everything is for real, while filming themselves doing so. However, Dominic has reckoned without Dresden getting carried away and Jennifer turning the tables on them.
The Brazilian-born Mitchell Altieri was one half of the directing duo known as The Butcher Brothers, along with Phil Flores. The two first appeared with the vampire film The Hamiltons (2006), followed by the remake of April Fool’s Day (2008), the original horror film The Violent Kind (2010) and The Hamiltons sequel The Thompsons (2012). Mitchell Altieri went solo to direct Holy Ghost People (2013), Raised by Wolves (2013), A Beginners Guide to Snuff, The Night Watchmen (2017), Star Light (2020) and Consumed (2024). The Butcher Brothers still appear to be alive and active here, at least with the story credit being attributed to them and the film being announced as a Butcher Brothers production. Altieri also co-writes the film with Cory Knauf, who had appeared as an actor in some of the earlier Butcher Brothers films.
There has never been a credible example of a snuff movie – a film that depicts people being killed for real – in real life, although there are some fakes in circulation. However, the idea is a prevalent one in horror films from the very first Found Footage film Snuff (1971) to Mute Witness (1995), the Nicolas Cage starring 8MM (1999), August Underground (2001) and sequels, The Great American Snuff Film (2003), the extraordinary Amateur Porn Star Killer (2007) and the savagery of A Serbian Film (2010). I have a more detailed listing of these here at Snuff Movies.
As I started watching, I was trying to decide whether A Beginners Guide to Snuff was a potentially amusing idea or something lame and unfunny. There is the odd amusing line: “There’s a journey of suffering in both romance and horror – one just involves more blood and guts.” But the more the film goes on, the more it feels like an idea for a mildly amusing short film that has been dragged out until the joke has become belaboured.
Brothers Luke Edwards (l) and Joey Kern (c) shoot their film with the imprisoned Bree Williamson
One of the major problems with the concept is that it is trying to make a comedy out of the grimmest possible subject matters for a film – namely the snuff movie, which supposedly depicts people being killed. To do such, Mitchell Altieri has to conduct a sleight of hand where the characters are faking what is going on, constantly threatening to torture and kill someone without actually doing so, are revealed to be using pig’s blood, or merely threaten to but never do cut off Bree Williamson’s fingers. Which is something that kind of renders the grimness that the idea of a snuff movie holds utterly toothless.
By the point A Beginners Guide to Snuff gets to the big twist [PLOT SPOILERS] where Bree Williamson turns the tables and proves to be a wanted serial killer who proceeds to start torturing the two brothers, everything get fairly silly. The whole show and its one-note joke feels laboured. Rather than striking any comedy notes, the tone is one of broad farce than rarely does anything to split a smile.
