A strong antidote to proudly desensitized tripe like 8mm, Thesis has a sensibility that barely exists in current American film. It begins from the premise that a man could actually be shocked to death by the trauma of viewing a brutal, videotaped murder. The unfortunate viewer is a university professor who had been asked to procure graphic images for Angela (Ana Torrent), a curious student working on a thesis on violence in audiovisual media. The tape winds up in Angela's hands, and suddenly she's The Woman Who Knew Too Much as nefarious types converge.

Amenabar, whose masterful follow-up, Abre los Ojos (Open Your Eyes), would take even more glee in leading and then inverting audience expectations, is already in his element with this low-budget feature. His directorial style is deceptively spare, forcing identification with the smart, pretty, but frail heroine, who isn't sure from moment to moment whom she most suspects. Is it the creepy guy with the heavy-metal sensibilities and the video fixation? Is it the cute guy who carries around the incriminating camcorder?

OK, little of what happens in the narrative actually withstands strict scrutiny. That's not the point. But the unlikely yarn is handled with aplomb, although Amenabar miscalculates by stretching it to the 121-minute mark. Following a lengthy, scary set piece that takes place in a hidden tunnel alongside the university's audiovisual archive, Thesis stumbles with a banal sequence involving jealousy, sex and Eurodisco, and then struggles to once again work up a head of steam. However, the movie works hard at character development, resists the urge to go for the gross-out, and maintains thematic consistency. And it is worth sticking around for the final reels -- Amenabar has a knack for adding resonance to a twist ending. Plus, you gotta love a movie in which the appearance of a Sony logo invariably symbolizes menace and depravity.

The DVD from Tanelorn Films is letterboxed at about 1.65:1, with non-removable subtitles that seem to have been electronically burned into a video master. The image is adequate, although it seems to have been taken from a tape source, including the occasional video dropout and a sound flub in the second half of the film. Better source materials certainly exist. A comparison to the trailer found on Sogepaq's excellent Abres Los Ojos disc shows that the Region 1 image is trimmed slightly on the right and across the bottom. (The aspect ratio of the Region 1 disc measures at 1.65:1, while the trailer on the Region 2 disc is closer to 1.70:1.) The picture on the U.S. disc is darker overall and less detailed. Adding one last insult, the subtitles are simply ugly and distracting. Don't get me wrong -- I'm surprised and grateful that we North Americans have this disc at all. At the same time, it is amazing what we put up with.