A step away from snuff
By Trapper
Movies have been getting really sick lately.
I blame you.
It’s all about supply and demand, and because you assholes love to watch people suffer and aren’t really picky about such trivialities as artistic merit or a coherent plot line, I’m forced to suffer the existence of movies such as Saws one through three, Hostel, Captivity, etc.
Why can’t you guys get turned on by something like accurate and unbiased journalism?
Shit, Arrested Development was canceled after only three brilliant seasons, yet Fear Factor is in its sixth, and the Saw franchise is about to release its fourth fucking instalment.
As much as I would like to criticize your shitty taste in general, today we are dealing specifically with your taste for what has come to be known as “torture porn.”
I know it isn’t some new thing to show disgusting and disturbing images on film, but how the hell did sick shit like watching Westley take a hacksaw to his leg make it so far into the mainstream?
I mean, I really don’t think any sort of defensible case can be made for these movies being “great stories,” and those of you who enjoyed them can’t honestly say that you weren’t — at bottom — just intrigued by the idea of disgusting violence.
Many would say that this “disgusting violence” is used for its shock value. The point of movies is, after all, to affect people in one way or another. From an artistic perspective, you could argue that the more the audience is affected, the better the art, so incredibly depraved scenes of violence are artistic.
I think this argument is horseshit, by the way — at least when applied to a movie like Captivity.
Art, my fucking ass.
I also worry about the type of society in which a movie like Hostel has to actually show an eye dangling out of a socket being cut off with scissors in order for the audience to be shocked. Frankly, a one-sentence description of that act is enough to get my stomach turning.
Are you people really that desensitized?
Argue for the artistic merit and shock value of movies all you want. I think you just want to see something gross. In the ad they teased you with the promise that you’d get to see what it looks like for someone to be tortured with a chainsaw, and you simply couldn’t resist.
You sick puppy. I bet you can’t wait to get your hands on a real live snuff film.
I’m not advocating censorship, unless, of course, censorship refers to an educated population bankrupting a studio like Twisted Pictures by refusing to be sucked in by the cheap promise of wet flesh dangling from bone.
What I’m trying to say here is this: Your taste sucks, and you are a disgusting person.
The people at Pajiba reviewed Captivity in what was quite possibly my favourite movie review of all time, colourfully titled: I am pissed the fuck off. Stop downloading your snuff film and take a second to check it out.
I would heartily encourage comments on this post in particular. It would be great to hear you tasteless fucks defend yourselves. Who knows? Maybe you’ll convert me.
September 25th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
I agree 100%. I don’t know what people see these films, because I sure don’t know any. Of course, I don’t know anyone who buys Beyonce albums either, which are similar to torture for me. Anyway.
September 25th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
When a culture starts to crave this type of depravity in its entertainment, there are some very dark roads it can go down in the effort to satisfy that appetite.
Like in Ancient Rome, where folks got to see the torture and evisceration happen live. You know if they had the technology of today, they wouldn’t have been more enlightened about human rights or dignity, they would have been streaming live close-ups of the kill shot across the globe.
September 25th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
You’re exactly right, that one-sentence description really was enough to get my stomach a-rolling. Why?! I remember a time when horror movies were unforgettable because of the atmosphere, the acting, the (god forbid!) plot. It’s sad that much of the genre has become nothing more than a series of gross-out images, and it scares me to think that people are shocked less and less by such images.
September 25th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
Haven’t you ever wanted to cut somebody into little itty bits? I know have, but I don’t act out on these crazy thoughts, because, well they are crazy. But fictional films provide a safe escape into the minds of twisted freaks. When I watch a movie like Hostel, I can like it because I know its not real. But if you were to show me real deal video of a dude cutting off his own leg, I’d fucking call the cops.
September 25th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
This safe-escepe argument, Jared, is not a bad one, but I still have trouble with it every time I hear it. Obviously the instinct is to say: “Well, the way you view the movie is okay, but the crazy people shouldn’t watch it.” which opens up a huge can of censorship worms. At any rate, I would still like to think that this “safe escape” could be accomplished without having to be quite so sick and excessive. As I said, do you really need to see the eye cut off with scissors, or would it be enough to suggest it?
I’ll think on it for a while.
September 25th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Eli Roth is going to kill all you assholes.
September 25th, 2007 at 11:47 pm
I have a feeling the people you’re talking to in this won’t be reading it much. That said I (almost) totally agree. The first Saw, I though, had at least some merit because it focused a bit more on what two people would do in that crazy fucking situation than on the gruesomeness (I think people forget that sometimes because of the second and third, which were shit). Even the first one wasn’t that great, though. All others I agree, are shit.
And when people say that art is supposed to get a response and that this torture porn does that, so it’s art, I say fuck you, any hack can get an emotional response with imagery like that. It’s the lowest form of emotional reaction. You’d have to be a fucking rock not to react to a dangling eye being cut off.
Thanks, I wish the mainstream would realize how disgusting this bullshit is.
September 26th, 2007 at 3:34 am
Okay, so you know the different between fiction and reality, right? Audiences aren’t stupid – if anything, they’re bored. The movies rely on shock value, because when it comes down to it, that’s all the Hollywood horror genre really has left.
No one’s strapping you down in front of TV and making you watch it. So don’t. Don’t like the movie posters, the cover art and the violence they suggest? Then, hey, don’t watch the fucking movie. You don’t have to agree with it, but all this cock-fapping on the internet does is make more people think: “Shit, I’ve gotta go see what this guy is whining about”.
September 26th, 2007 at 8:01 am
I have seen only Hostel. I hated it. Also, having a background in the sciences, I know a fraction more than the average about anatomy. Unfortunately, things don’t work quite as they do in those movies.
Still, I hated Hostel (I didn’t pay for it either. My idiotic brother – mental age of about 16 – hired it and induced me to watch it).
September 26th, 2007 at 9:50 am
The original Saw was, to me, a solid exercise in building tension and playing with the audience’s expectations. I enjoyed it. The sequels, however, are eyerolling at best and, at worst, best if ignored. I saw Hostel in the theater because Cabin Fever struck me as a ridiculous but fun piece of gory fluff and I expected Hostel to be the same. I was horribly disappointed – Hostel was nothing but a derivative piece of hackery that managed to bore me and the high school-aged mall girls who’d snuck into the flick with their boyfriends. I avoided Hostel 2, Captivity, I Know Who [Killed My Career], and the rest of the so-called “Torture Porn” films.
The sad thing is, as much as fans of film – specifically horror films – bitch and moan and complain that these flicks are iredeemable and unwanted, they’re still made because they make money. People, whether they admit it or not, are seeing them. And the studios are in the business to make movies that make money (not Art), as the glut of remakes, “reimaginings,” sequels, and other assorted nuggets of celluloid feces will attest. It’s easier, and more profitable, to make and market Rob Zombie’s atrocious Halloween dreck than it is to do the same with an intelligent and funny film like Behind The Mask: The Rise Of Leslie Vernon. It’s not “right,” but that’s the way it is. And that’s sad because there ARE good films…good HORROR films being made and there ARE talented people trying to get these films to you. But, as long as dead-brained teenagers and mouth-breathing adults choose to go for the junk food that the studios offer, we’ll never get to see them. And that’s the true pity.
September 26th, 2007 at 11:52 am
David – I heartily agree. As I’ve said, I don’t have a problem with horror, or even gore for that matter. It’s all in how you use it.
Interestingly enough, having written this critique of torture porn only a few days ago, I found myself watching a Korean movie called “Save the Green Planet,” last night.
Halfway through, watching a man torture his boss in an assortment of ways, I thought to myself: “Am I watching torture porn?”
I would like to think the answer to that question was ‘no,’ and I am planning to review the film for Tear It Down in the interest of showing how a film in which torture and some gore (nothing like hostel) are right out in front, can actually be a surprisingly heartfelt critique of humanity and well worth watching.
But where the fuck do you draw the line? Who decides the value?
September 26th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
Bravo Trapper! and all the comments!
I actually didnt mind Hostel (but not a fave or anything) just because Ive travelled to strange places in Europe with hot babes wanting to get down and dirty far too fast while I was actually thinking if I was going to be kidnapped/robbed….because it was too good to be true. The torture scene was disturbing and did not like the movie because of that part at all. However, I did like the revenge!!!! and when those street kids help out!
If you think these movies are bad, you should see some of the video games out there nowadays. Not only are you watching the gore, YOU get to DO/CONTROL IT! (you sick fucks.) I hear my twisted co-workers talking about how realistic certain games are, and how “kewwwwl” the blood splatters. I even heard them mention how you get to pick up a cat and attach it to you gun and use it as a silencer…….that did it for me…..
yep, they are sick fucks alright….really sick fucks.
I always tell them that violence, death and gore isnt KEEEWWLLLL. Ask WWII vets if is was kewwwwl when their best friends head was blown to bits right beside them if it was awesome.
September 26th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
I believe that the term “torture porn” is overused, applied too quickly to movies that don’t deserve the title. “Wolf Creek”, for example, is often lumped into that category, when I think it’s far from it. Harrowing, yes; violent, yes (although, like the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre, it FEELS more violent than it actually is) but it’s a movie that’s about suspense more than anything. These are characters we DON’T want to see die, which makes it an upsetting experience.
I don’t believe porn is intended to be upsetting.
It all depends on how you watch them, and it’s best to watch things selectively. I skip the Saw movies, for example. I’ve seen the first two (the first, overrated, the second, terrible, and I’m going to assume it’s downhill from there). I do dislike the phrase “torture porn” but I can agree to it being applied here, at least to the sequels.
Here we are given a series of cardboard characters, they are put into horrible traps, there is blood, they die, the people who like the series cheer. Other people are disgusted; I’m just irritated by the needlessness of it all, and the laziness of the filmmaking involved.
That said, I think the Hostel films try a little harder to build character, and there is more atmosphere here than in a lot of horror films. And, like Wolf Creek, the violence is intended to upset, not to tittilate. I wouldn’t recommend the films to a lot of people, and yes, there are people of, let’s say, lesser filmmaking taste who just see ALL these movies for the prospect of blood, but it is a term that is too readily applied.
But Captivity looks absolutely terrible.
September 30th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
To Will, whose comment escaped my gaze until just now (it got filtered as spam and had to be rescued):
I appreciate everything you have to say, except I’d like to think I live in a world where relying on heavier and heavier gore to maintain “shock value” is not ALL the horror genre has left. To be honest, some of the movies that have terrified me to excess did not rely on a constant onslaught of gory visuals, but an INTELLIGENT STORYLINE.
I do, however, agree with your comment that I am merely drawing attention to the phenomenon. It’s a double-edged sword. It cuts me every time I have to denounce Paris Hilton as the worst thing to happen to planet earth.
Ah fuck.