Review of Mute Witness

Mute Witness is a modest, yet very solid thriller that never really received the attention or good comments it deserves. The film – written and directed entirely by Anthony Waller – is a tense, action-packed thriller with black comedy aspects and horror influences. No pointless mumbo-jumbo or endless plot-twists…just straight to the point mystery. Mute Witness handles about the vicious topic of `snuff'-movies and is effectively set in Russia. *** SPOILERS *** Since the production costs are cheaper there, a US film crew temporarily moves to Russia for shooting a horror film. An old hangar is used as film location. The female make-up artist of the team accidentally gets locked up overnight and while trying to find a way out, she witnesses the recordings of an authentic snuff-movie! She's caught and tries to escape but, since she's a mute, she can't cry for help and neither can she explain what she saw to the police properly. The girl's life is in real danger now, since there's a whole hidden network behind these snuff productions and they don't want the witnesses to be alive… *** End Spoilers ***. Mute Witness contains multiple highly exiting action sequences and is rather bloody. Some of the mystery clues are effectively kept secret till the very end. Regarding the similar topic, I'd say it's definitely better than the more famous `8 mm', directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Nicolas Cage. The acting in Mute Witness isn't great, but the leading actress (who's Russian herself) looks really cute. Sir Alec Guinness makes a special appearance, too. And a very cool one, I may say. Surely recommended with guaranteed fun and scares.