The 8th Murder
A banned movie that shouldn’t be watched
Hello readers, let me tell you the story about how I died fifteen years ago.
It was a Friday night and I was browsing at the local video store when I came across a strange DVD. The movie was called The 8th Murder, and it had a rather unusual tagline: An Experimental Movie. Watch with caution.
Intrigued, I checked the internet. The movie was created not by a Hollywood director but by a neuroscientist as an experiment to find out how far human senses can be hijacked by moving images and sound. The cast and crew who worked on the movie were all amateurs. The movie went straight to DVD. Within a week, for some mysterious reasons, all the DVDs were pulled out and the movie was officially banned. No one knew why.
I was certain the store wouldn’t let me check out a banned video, but still, I tried my luck. It happened to be the day the computers were down at the store, and the clerk let me check out the DVD after recording the movie name and my user id on a notebook. She didn’t know it was a banned movie.
I started watching the movie as soon as I reached home. Right from the opening scene, it was clear that I was watching something very different. The camera angles, the color, the sound, and the editing were all done in such a way as to create the maximum impact on the senses. It pulled me in strongly and wouldn’t let me go. I felt I was part of the story, experiencing some raw emotions. I was in a deep meditative state, totally unified with what was happening on the screen. I lost myself completely.
The movie’s story wasn’t anything new. It was the usual whodunit story where seven friends meet at a resort and get murdered one by one within twenty-four hours. Who did it? Was it the maid? Was it the cook? Was it the driver? I never found out who the real murderer was. I never even finished the movie. All I remember was this — one minute I was immersed in the movie and the next minute I was kicked out of it. Everything went completely dark. It was total silence.
If you are wondering why a movie about seven friends getting murdered was called The 8th Murder, go back and read the first line of this story.
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