Nicolas Cage has not has a recent run of good luck. This isn’t his fault, you know… it’s hard trying to carry a film all by yourself! Snake Eyes, while interesting, didn’t seem all that special. Now, in 8mm, once again Cage plays the “less than perfect, but will still do the right thing in the end and stay sane” role, walking the REAL “Thin Red Line.” Whoever did the trailer for this movie should have MADE the movie, because in the span of the same time it took the commercial to get us interested, director Joel Schumacher turns us off, making us wish we didn’t have to see it. If that was his intent, he should have written the book instead. In the trailer, we see Cage’s reaction to the film, and we accept that it’s horrifying based only upon that, but in the movie, the film that provokes that reaction doesn’t live up to it. In fact, it looks like a bad slasher film, complete with a guy in a silly-looking mask. When the centerpiece of your story is about a film too horrifying to watch, there simply could be no way of showing it while keeping an R-rating, and the director should have seen that. Two skulls for Mr. Cage, zero for Mr. Schumacher. Is it any wonder that the Batman franchise is dying?

(2 out of 4)