Gore in modern horror films

Movies
41

Saw 1 surprised me a lot when I saw it, and I liked it very much. I have seen one of the sequels, number two or three (the only scene I remember of it is someone digging around in a hole filled with syringes), and it was absolute shit.

There’s one film with Val Kilmer that reminded me a bit of Saw and I liked a lot, Mindhunters.

House of Wax was very good, too. The idea of being in a far away place full of lunatics you can’t escape and no one to come and help you has always pressed my buttons. That’s why I love movies like The Thing, Wrong Turn (called Exit 666 over here) or 30 days of night. The scene in HoW where the guy pulls the skin off his pal’s face was EXTREME.

Again on the subject of violence against animals vs. sexual violence or child abuse in movies, I can’t say why violence of one kind bothers me that much, while other violence just makes me shove more popcorn in. It’s even the same when I play videogames: in one of my ten favorite games ever, Carmageddon 2, running over and crushing old grandmas made me laugh with joy, while at the same time I always tried not to run over any of the dogs that ran around the streets, and hitting one and hearing its scream of agony made me cringe.

42

I have to say, the primary enjoyment I get from the Friday the 13th movies are watching the critical 2 or 3 characters that wind up (for the purposes of the franchise, temporarily) defeating Jason. Yes, occasionally a death is funny in an Itchy and Scratchy kind of way, but really, I just want to see who is clever enough and spunky enough to take Jason down. My favorite scene in the entire series is the opening bit in Jason Goes to Hell where the “victim” turns out to be an FBI agent luring Jason into an ambush. The movie goes downhill from there as they fail to deal properly with the body, the fools.

43

…no. I’m sorry, I’m going to make a distinction between the morality or psychological healthiness of depicting or enjoying sports, depicting or enjoying forces with roughly equal agency in conflict with each other, even if that conflict is relatively intense, and the depicting or enjoyment of helpless people being tortured. We may have to just agree to disagree on that one.

44

Do you even like horror movies? Or any kind of shocking portrayal of violence or depravity? Because the analogy I was drawing was that if you do not meet the bare minimum standard of enjoying some forms of violent horror, then it’s obvious that more extreme forms of it are not going to be for you. The analogy to sports was not to say they are in any way comparable in terms of content, impact, or anything of the sort: it’s that if you are not a fan of those kinds of movies generally, then it’s not really going to be surprising when the more “hardcore” in the genre also aren’t embraced.

But go ahead and pass judgment on the moral values or psychological health of anyone who enjoys films you don’t, no matter what it is they are watching for. That’s a successful line of criticism for lots of people with respect to horror or violence. My point was really more targeted at people who cross that initial threshold into movies that really challenge one’s ability to see past what is taboo or shocking, and then start nitpicking about who exactly has the market cornered on “unacceptable”.

45

If anything bothers me about modern horror, it’s the same thing that’s always bothered me about the genre: it’s just not that scary. But boy do those marketing departments work overtime to convince you otherwise. A grim voiceover informs you how ungodly scary and frightening the film is and so forth. These are the same people that tried to convince us Rob Zombie’s House of the Dead was scary! I’m onto you, Hollywood! My favorite spin is how straight-to-DVD films are “too shocking for theaters” as opposed to being, you know, shit films that couldn’t get a theater release.

I’ve seen a lot of these films mostly because I have cable and I need something on while I work from home. Most of them aren’t remotely scary. Probably they worked better on the big screen, since most of the scares in a horror film are from a crashingly loud soundtrack as opposed to any visuals, even explicit ones. It’s a bunch of 20 or 30 somethings pretending to be one decade younger (nothing new there), most of them unrecognizable aside from Hey-What-Was-She-In-Before-No-She-Didn’t-Star-In-It here and there. Often it takes an interminably long time for anything to even happen, I suppose that is supposed to be tension mounting or something. Oh, and color filters. If your horror film isn’t shot through color filters, you’re just not doing it right, Buster!

I like the basic premise behind the Saw films, but it’s not really being executed (lol) very well in its iterations. Also, Jigsaw is pretty dull archvillian, I suppose part of that is even a complete film-twist dolt like me guessed who he was 20 minutes into the first Saw and the guy who plays him is Hey-What-Was-He-In-Before-No-He-Didn’t-Star-In-It. The Hostel films try to push the envelope and they have scenes that are borderline softcore porn so they are certainly more evocative than many films of the genre, but that doesn’t make them particularly entertaining on all but the most rudimentary of levels. IMO Hostel 2 was almost funny because it tried so hard. It bordered on camp.

None of it really bothers me as I don’t squick out easily, I suppose that is due in large part to my career path. I can see the appeal in them for those who are squeamish, I suppose. I’ve never really understood people who are hardcore horror fans. I think it’s a little weird to be preoccupied with watching other people suffer and die. Then again not everyone has spent years and years around people who are suffering and dying, so it’s probably more of a thrill for them. I’ve softened my take on it a little over time to include being confused over why anyone is a hardcore fan of anything. I guess that’s just the Aquarius in me!

46

As I said earlier, I like hybrid forms like comedy/horror, or action/horror. I also don’t know if you and I would even agree where horror or depravity begins and ends, vs…I dunno, “psychological thriller” or movies that have generically scary moments. I could maybe work up a big list of movies that I liked or didn’t like that might or might not have horror elements?

But go ahead and pass judgment on the moral values or psychological health of anyone who enjoys films you don’t

I’m not passing judgment on the moral values or psychological health of people who like movies I don’t. I’m passing judgment on the moral values and psychological health of people who enjoy watching people get tortured (setting aside anything related to consensual SM lifestyle stuff), especially to the degree that a lot of this material is marketed towards men and focuses depicting the brutalization of women.

47

I like horror movies, as long as they’re not too cheesy. I think what most scares me of horror movies is the mixture of scary music, sounds and silence. After all, I know I’m just watching guys with plastic knives and girls sprinkled with fake blood.

I don’t think watching horror movies is any indication of the character of the viewer. I watch horror movies and play violent games like Manhunt, but in real life I feel guilty when I have to stomp on a cockroach.

Hmmm… On second thought, I do realize that sometimes when I’m having a depressing day or am in a very bad mood, or very sad etc., I feel like I’d like to hop in a Jagdpanzer tank and roll over and shoot everybody.

Maybe it’s a sign that deep inside, I’m a bad person. Who knows?

Actually, do you ever wonder why we DON’T do bad things? Do we really only not do them because they are wrong, or our society says they are wrong, or do we maybe sometimes only not do them because, hey, we will probably get punished for it? If you could rob a bank, knowing that there’s nobody in there, and someone left the entrance door and the security vault open and the security cameras turned off, and the bank has theft insurance, would you do it? I guess at least some of us would say yes. Would those of you who said yes, on the other hand, do it if the bank employees were there, cameras where on and the safe were locked? I guess less of you would say “yes”. Why? The act is the same, only now the possibility of punishment is higher.

Bottom line, I think people are inherently amoral. We keep inside the perimeter of the law out of fear for punishment, not because we care about good or bad.

I think the enjoyment we get out of watching horror movies is living, in our mind, the scenario of just kicking some shit…

48

That’s probably unnecessary, but I’m sure it would be interesting.

I’m not passing judgment on the moral values or psychological health of people who like movies I don’t. I’m passing judgment on the moral values and psychological health of people who enjoy watching people get tortured (setting aside anything related to consensual SM lifestyle stuff), especially to the degree that a lot of this material is marketed towards men and focuses depicting the brutalization of women.

But the assumption you are making is that to “enjoy” a film (which is a generic term I am using rather than saying something has to be actually fun or joyous to experience) which contains elements of torture automatically means that you are there specifically to savor the infliction of pain on helpless people. I’m sure you can imagine any number of scenarios in other genres where picking a certain perspective and focus could make any group of fans sound like lunatics (see Ruthless Reviews for such an approach taken professionally for satiric effect).

What I’m arguing is that a well made horror film with disturbing shit can appeal to a wide variety of audiences for different reasons, and that it’s very difficult to create a set of rules past which something is “too much”. You say child abuse is beyond the pale, I say Lolita. You say “no, graphic child abuse, asshole” and I’d agree, but that’s an exceptional case rather than the rule.

Also, I think what people imagine most of the blockbuster American shock movies to be is a lot different from how graphic they actually are (even after seeing them, in many cases). On the other hand, some of the films cited positively in this thread, by me and others, that are primarily from non-American filmmakers are in fact every bit as horrifying (and explicitly so) as I feared.

49

And for that you could say “Running Scared” or even “Bastard Out of Carolina” if you want to switch genres. Also, I couldn’t agree more. A well-made is a well-made film, I’m hard pressed to think of anything that would mitigate that.

50

I confess I have no idea what you’re talking about. I thought it was pretty clear that I was responding to William Harms saying he didn’t understand why people draw a distinction between “torture porn” and “slasher films”. In the process I referred to Hostel as “trash” and included an asterisked comment to point out there I didn’t think all movies dismissed as “torture porn” are trash.

And that was pretty much the sum total of my contribution. But now I’m spinning off into that annoying Internet thing were I have to explain myself because I apparently wasn’t clear or I’m not understanding where you disagree.

But, again, I fully understand why people wouldn’t enjoy Wolf Creek, Audition, L’Interieur, Funny Games, Eden Lake, the Hills Have Eyes remake, Irreversible, or Open Water. Much like Hostel, they’re brutal horror movies that aren’t for people who just want to enjoy a goofy slasher film.

-Tom
51

Interesting take, Adam. I tend to prefer a much older explanation. Not for “torture porn”, per se, which fetishizes suffering, but for the more extreme horror movies we’ve been talking about.

-Tom
52

I’m confused by the asterisk, I guess. When you said

You have to be pretty tone deaf to not get the distinction. I don’t see how you can compare artless and borderline offensive* trash like the Hostel movies with the relatively cheerful fun of slasher films like Friday the 13th. Eli Roth obviously has a hard-on for grindhouse brutality. Torture porn like the Hostel movies fetishize suffering, but slasher films are just goofy monster movies.

-Tom

  • Compare this to artful and borderline offensive movies like Irreversible, L’Interieur, the Hills Have Eyes remake, and Wolf Creek.

I got the impression you were drawing a line in the sand of sorts. Now they all seem to be in one category for you, so I guess there’s nothing we disagree about.

53

I could certainly have that discussion, and I think it would make for an interesting thread. Why do I hate Hostel, but have a deep and almost begrudging respect for Irreversible? What makes The Strangers offensive pap to me, yet I own a copy of Alexander Aja’s Hills Have Eyes? Why would I put up with being jerked around by not one, but two versions of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, yet I can’t even remember which or how many of the Saw movies I’ve seen? What makes Severance unfunny and tacky whereas The Cottage is one of my all-time favorite horror comedies?

So, yeah, I can definitely draw lines in the sand, but I’d at least want a chance to explain those lines. :)

-Tom
54

I didn’t like Saw, I always felt like it violated its own internal rules for shock value and to cover it a thin plot. Maybe the theater version missed some important scenes, but jigsaw trapped the only dude who was nice to him into his schemes. That’s lame.

I wasn’t really a huge Firday the 13th fan either (the reveal seemed gimmicky there IMO; not as gimmicky as the entire last 20-30 minutes of saw though. Holy shit that was bad). I agree with the idea that Friday et al are really monster movies. I kind of felt like Saw, despite kind of being a torture porn film, was supposed to be another slasher/monster movie with a twist. It looks to me like maybe they turned into more torture porn in the next umpteen installments, but I wouldn’t know for sure.

I’m not sure I get the appeal of torture porn, which seems like it has sort of transcended the traditional gorey films of yore (which I guess derived form things like The Abominable Dr Phibes, heh). I understand the appeal of “random and horrible shit happens to people for no reason” at it’s core; Lovecraft does some of that (King as well). I would agree with the notion that a well made film is a well made film, but I think someone is going to work alot harder to do it. I’ve seen Saw, parts of 2, parts of the hostels, parts of Touristas. Meh. I haven’t seen Wolf Creek yet but I wand to, so maybe that will change my mind.

55

This:

[i]Peter (sees hideous monster) :o

Hideous Monster: RAWWWWWWWWW!!

Peter: AAAAAAAAAAH!![/i]

56

For sure. I just reflexively object to the tone of moral opprobrium that was being attached to that distinction, whether by my own prejudices and experiences in this sort of discussion or from what people were implying.

57

I object to your objection as well as your word usage.

58

Is there another kind?

59

Isn’t there a Saw 5 already? Anyway, I find them really good as replacement for sleeping pills.

You fall asleep during horror movies? Just how desensitized are you? Does the FBI have a file on you yet?

60

An interpretation of torture porn’s appeal that interested me - a viewer could be empathizing with the victims, alongside having the thrill of seeing boundaries violated. Going from the discussion here (of all the films discussed in the thread, I’ve only seen Irreversible and Man Bites Dog) the victims in these films suffer extreme physical discomfort and psychic distress at the hands of an authority which they cannot challenge. The empathizing viewer sees their own inflexible lifestyle, in which their meaningful decisions are often outside of their control.

Except for the last sentence, that’s what it is for me. I project myself into those torture movies and I connect with the victims. It’s just the way I am, I guess. Because of that, those movies have far greater impact on me than watching Jason slash up another camper. They seem far more “real” to me and thus, scare me deeply. Plus I have a huge problem with torture so there’s another whole level where they work on me.