overview
Jose is a filmmaker putting the finishing touches on his latest production, a schlocky vampire picture. Feeling supremely dissatisfied with his vocation and heroin addicted girlfriend Ana, he arrives back at his apartment to discover a package from his friend Pedro. It contains a reel of super 8mm film, an audiotape and a key to Pedro’s apartment.
Flashbacks show how these two men, both of whom share an extraordinary passion for filmmaking, met at Pedro’s family home where Jose was location scouting. Pedro, who’s never without his super 8mm camera, believes life is only worth anything if it’s caught on film. Furthermore, he’s tapped a hidden power inherent in film images that causes him to experience a mystical state of “Arrebato,” or rapture. Before long Pedro becomes addicted to this sensation, eventually cutting himself off from the outside world and devoting his life to filming himself in bed. His camera in turn grows increasingly powerful as it saps more and more of Pedro’s life force, eventually developing the capacity to turn itself on and off and, more alarmingly, literally erase objects—and, inevitably, people—from existence.
All this is evident on the film and tape Pedro has mailed to Jose, who in the end decides to visit his friend’s apartment. He arrives to find Pedro’s camera set up and running, but its owner nowhere to be found...