Adam Corraliza’s short movie deals with a very delicate problem found in our world today: pain. Troughout the years, pain was perceived in different ways in arts, and the way of dealing with it has changed. Nowadays we’ve reached a whole new level of approaching this matter, leaving the classical resignation apart, and responding to pain with even harder pain. In 'The Pleasure of Malice', the narrator’s pain can be relieved only by creating greater pain to someone else. His plan of doing this is totally over the limit, and his motif is overwhelming.

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After his mother’s death, the student / narrator struggles to comfort his mind in some way. Anything seems useless, but as always, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Even though we’ve seen so many real cases of murderers filming their actions and their preparation process, Adam Corraliza made it artistic, and combined parts of madness found in the cases of many real life lunatics. At some point, this short reminded us of the 1999 Columbine school shooting, where the criminals did what they did after being led by interior frustrations that ate them alive. Frustration is also the key to understand this brutal short; frustration comes along with the loss of faith in everything and trying to deal with life in great despair. The bathtub torture scenes that can be seen near the end of this short are highlighting the inhumanity one can reach when they have nothing to lose, or nothing to live for.

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The filming method is interesting for keeping the case truthful, untaining the madness that gives this short a new sphere of conjunction. We definitely recommend this short as a study case, but with a warning of “not trying this at home”, because we are aware of the times we live in, where teens are highly impressionable, and this may put nasty ideas in their heads.

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Written by Vlad A. G