While I'm generally a sucker for creepy old movie stories, this one left me a bit cold. All the perhaps overly long descriptions that attempted to get me to understand why yet another nudity and violence pic would have such a fascination for the average viewer fell flat due to how familiar much of it sounded. Heck, even really old stuff like Un Chien Andalou contains some of these elements such as an initial opening of shocking violence. Yet most people don't go through such films frame by frame, except maybe in film school. A lot of people yawn through such stuff, so I was left still wondering what would have made this particular film so truly fascinating for average viewers not looking for something to fixate on and without a thing for violence.
At the same time, the story goes out of its way to emphasize the almost universal fascination it has for people and how both men and women gather together in stadiums to watch the film, so that seemed to get in the way of the whole "male gaze" version of an explanation for where the story was headed in its emphasis if so much more than just male slasher film fans find the film a marvel. The more unique we are told the film is, the less likely it seems that the story is such a general, and familiar, criticism of common slasher films, especially since the final girl of this film even seems to dismiss the whole idea of slasher film theories having any bearing on events.
Not that there is anything wrong with that in itself, that the author may in fact be thumbing her nose a little at the whole train of critical thought about shocker films is perhaps one of the potentially better things about the story.
Another story that deals with similar films in a similar way, though I think to better overall effect, is The Fear, which appeared in one of the Year's Best Horror anthologies edited by Ellen Datlow. It even has the same interview scene with the girl movie victim, though with a different result that I won't spoil.