Cigarette Burns (2005)

You know those little black holes that sometimes flash for a quarter of a second at the upper right corner of a film? Some people call them cigarette burns, and they used to cue theater projectionists to start up the next film reel in, before the invasion of digital projection. This vicious one hour feature suggests they might have a different purpose as well.

As a sort of update of his own In the Mouth of Madness, Carpenter returns with a tribute to horror film enthusiasts. Somewhat similar to Polanski's Ninth Gate, the film follows a tormented man, who makes a living by hunting down rare films. The plot plays around with namedropping actual films, festivals and facts, mixed with slight twists of the truth, in a most ingenious manner, making the protagonist struggle to separate truth from fiction the closer he gets to his holy grail.

This works so well, that the real scare factor comes not from the beautiful blood and gore, but the sneaking suspicion that you, the viewer, might also be in danger by merely watching the film.

IMDB