I suddenly have an intense desire to watch a Jimmy Stewart film. And take a shower.

April 11, 2007 9:09 AM

"It wasn't scary, it was just gratuitous, as if they thought, 'I know, let's have a rape,' and that made me quite angry." The question will be asked often in the coming weeks, as "Vacancy" and "Hostel 2" approach: Do modern horror films ("gorno," or gore pornography) go too far, particularly when it comes to women? Who said violent misogyny was entertaining? Is this just a retread of the exploitation wave of the 1970s/80s? (Most links NSFW, sensitive souls, people who detest violence)
posted by jbickers (199 comments total)

Movies are violent and misogynistic? Really? I had no idea, I'm shocked.
posted by doctor_negative at 9:20 AM on April 11, 2007

"It wasn't scary, it was just gratuitous..."

Talking about the genre or just the rape?
posted by DU at 9:26 AM on April 11, 2007

I didn't see any mention of "gorno" in your "gorno" link.
posted by horsemuth at 9:28 AM on April 11, 2007

A previous discussion on Cannibal Holocaust.
posted by Dr-Baa at 9:29 AM on April 11, 2007

I didn't see any mention of "gorno" in your "gorno" link.
I think you might have followed the wrong link then...
posted by Dr-Baa at 9:30 AM on April 11, 2007

nevermind I was looking at another link.
posted by horsemuth at 9:31 AM on April 11, 2007

Phew. It's not comics for once.
posted by Artw at 9:32 AM on April 11, 2007

There's a certain satisfaction - all politics, weight, and meaning aside - to seeing something tangible and solid get destroyed: violence. And when it's presented in the right way, it can be as cathartic as any form of post-modernism - the same way we enjoy genres being skewered or exposed - but when it's overdone or done without thought it just becomes painful and uncomfortable, the only goal of the filmmaker being to make the audience squirm, with no satisfaction on the audiences part - just the director having the satisfaction of having made the audience squirm.

And the same director can sometimes swing both ways - look at Takashi Miike's Audition vs. Imprint (the "banned" Masters of Horror episode he did for Showtime.
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 9:34 AM on April 11, 2007

Has anyone seen Grindhouse? can you weigh in on this score with regard to that film? I'm particularly interested in whether Rodriguez and Tarantino manage to subvert the exploitation model or simply repeat the misogyny of that era?
posted by anotherpanacea at 9:44 AM on April 11, 2007

You know who else is violent and misogynistic?

America
posted by Mister_A at 9:47 AM on April 11, 2007

Good point by Roth and Craven in the "gorno" linked article about the true horror being front page news everyday. But how are slasher movies inspired by the breakdown of the nuclear family?
posted by hydrophonic at 9:48 AM on April 11, 2007

SmileyChewtrain, what about the part of the audience that finds satisfaction in squirming and having squirmed? I like to squirm.
posted by Evstar at 9:50 AM on April 11, 2007

Did you know that there is an entire genre of film dedicated to the realization of rape/torture/murder fantasies?

I fucking hate that this shit exists, tawdry crap like Turistas and Hostel, and am disgusted/saddened that people are entertained by such trash, but what's to be done about it? Censorship? Banning? Public shaming? Extradition to Uzbekistan? The cost of a free society, I guess.

I suppose it is not worse than what happens in the headlines on a daily basis, but there's something kind of gross about pandering to an audience who wants to see a hyper realistic version of it for entertainment purposes.
posted by psmealey at 9:52 AM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

The first link in the FPP intrigued me in decrying the relative dearth of female film directors in this genre. Maybe the gals who want to stand behind cameras have better taste than to make these kinds of films?

Another thought: Are these films getting worse -- more graphic and brutal in their depictions? A lady I knew once told me of a friend who'd visited a restaurant or nightclub in Tokyo that had tabletop jukeboxes that would show you a video of ... well, a rape. That kind of freaked me out to hear, but this sounds like the same thing, only in the dark with popcorn.
posted by pax digita at 9:54 AM on April 11, 2007

In my view every Saw film should be NC-17, as should any rape/exploitation film.

Irreversible still makes me sick.
posted by four panels at 9:55 AM on April 11, 2007

how are slasher movies inspired by the breakdown of the nuclear family?

As I understand it, the loss of the rituals of family life create many more moments of isolation, which are presented as dangerous because slashers only attack individuals, not groups. You can also see this in the inevitable attacks on sexually active teenagers, who must be punished for their part in misaligning the traditional sequence of marriage, then sexuality, then reproduction.
posted by anotherpanacea at 9:58 AM on April 11, 2007 [2 favorites]

But how are slasher movies inspired by the breakdown of the nuclear family?

The slashers in the movies usually come from severely f'ed-up families, and this allows those of us from less dysfunctional families to say "We may be messed up, but we're not as messed up as those guys."
posted by infinitewindow at 10:00 AM on April 11, 2007

There's a certain satisfaction - all politics, weight, and meaning aside - to seeing something tangible and solid get destroyed: violence.

Interesting; isn't it usually some person getting destroyed in these films? And maybe that's why they are more troubling than, say, footage of a building being blown up?

I like being scared. I detest torture as entertainment, because I have a pretty high amount of empathy...I squirm even when someone just gets humiliated on screen. And I kind of like that about myself, actually.

The redeeming feature of some of the older flicks was that the violence was so fake you didn't really believe the characters were getting killed. THe more fake, the more fun the movie was, really.

But yeah, misogyny is pretty rampant through all the more violent genres, (except for the occasional Jamie Lee Curtis/Sigourney Weaver/Linda Hamilton triumph) it's just that the increased brutality of this last bunch of torture flicks has brought it into greater focus.
posted by emjaybee at 10:02 AM on April 11, 2007 [3 favorites]

Slasher films are just a stopgap measure until we have cameras installed everywhere and can tap into our personal streaming media feeds, where we can watch Real disasters, murders, rapes, decapitations, and other violent deaths in Real Time, in the comfort of our own homes, alone. The transition has already begun.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:06 AM on April 11, 2007 [5 favorites]

I find enough horror in my daily life - no need to pay for it or watch it.
posted by homodigitalis at 10:06 AM on April 11, 2007 [2 favorites]

So just let me say that the ad campaign for "Captivity" is not only a literal sign of the collapse of humanity, it's an assault. [...] It's like being mugged (and I have been).

Et tu, Joss? That otherwise sensible people turn so righteously frothy over words and images is the single best argument for the first amendment we could ask for.
posted by kid ichorous at 10:07 AM on April 11, 2007 [2 favorites]

I think Roth's take is a bit of a cop out. Of course real horror occurs in reality. That's why it's reality, Eli. Surpringly, real comedy and real romance can also be found in the real world. But then, Craven says that crossing the line for him would be to create a snuff film...

I think what makes this all disturbing, at least for me, is that these films appeal to the least empathic, and the least socially adjusted among us. This is speaking from my own personal experience, I'm sure there are exceptions, but kids watch these movies, or the adults I know who are just a little weird.
posted by Doug at 10:10 AM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

Terrible, gratuitous stuff on film is enjoyed by people who have never had any real terror in their lives. Those of us who have had real evil happen to us avoid such crap, as a rule.
posted by SaintCynr at 10:17 AM on April 11, 2007 [6 favorites]

anotherpanacea: I saw Grindhouse the other day. In my opinion, it's not even in the same catagory as the likes of Saw and Hostel. It's a combination homage/parody of various genres. Rodriquez' being a zombie/infection movie much like Evil Dead, and Tarantino's "girl power" exploitation much like Switchblade Sisters (for my lack of a better example). And in between are short "preview" flicks (my favorite part of the whole show) spoofing all the ridiculous cliches horror films have. Check out Thanksgiving on Youtube (NSFW!).

Grindhouse never takes itself seriously but puts on a front like it does- which may annoy the shit out of some, but I loved it.
posted by Dr-Baa at 10:17 AM on April 11, 2007

Has anyone seen Grindhouse? can you weigh in on this score with regard to that film?

(minor spoilers follow)

There isn't any nudity in either of the features. The Rodriguez movie, which is quite clearly a send-up, seems more directly influenced by action thrillers of the '80s than low-budget exploitation movies of the '70s. As for the Tarantino movie, after a lot of talky scenes, it takes a left turn about halfway through and becomes a grrl-power revenge film. One might easily argue that his treatment of race in the movie is problematic, but that's nothing new for Tarantino.

The fake trailers, on the other hand, are pretty good at implying that the films they're advertising would be chock-full of wall-to-wall misogyny, if they existed. (Eli Roth's trailer for Thanksgiving is the standout here.) But those are all done with a wink and a nod and ironic distance.

As for whether the movie should be considered subversive--I'd argue no, not because they aren't attempting to comment on their heritage in a postmodern sense (they clearly are), but because their audience has most likely already been subverted, if you know what I mean--if you know the slightest thing about Grindhouse beforehand, you go into it expecting to see a movie that's "subversive." So whatever cultural politics the films contain (which are pretty slight) are already repeating the party line.

On preview: Doug's comment reminds me that when I saw Grindhouse, there was one person in the theater who was clearly mentally ill--he was sitting by himself, and laughed loudly at the most inappropriate times, like whenever a character mentioned the subject of oral sex in passing: "HAW HAW HAW! OH, SHIT! A HAW HAH!" So maybe the paragraph immediately above this one isn't completely true.
posted by Prospero at 10:17 AM on April 11, 2007

Phew. It's not comics for once.

I made a comment about this a while ago in a comics thread, but I think something similar to "gorno" is noticeable in comics, in that the element of "killing" a character has become so unbelievable because of the standard "comes back" plotline that instead, the new "most terrible thing" villains can do to heroes is violating their female associates. Think about how many DC and Marvel plotlines over the last few years have revolved around the wife/girlfriend/daughter/etc. of a major character being beaten, raped, or killed.

And yeah, I've never understood the entire slasher-film genre in itself. I just don't get why people pay ten bucks to watch people brutally suffer and be tortured on-screen. (I didn't get The Passion either for pretty much the same reason.) At least Carrie had some kind of bizarre redemption/revenge thing for the finale and the old-school Wes Craven stuff had the understanding that the kids would eventually fight back and defeat the evil whatever, but all these movies where the plot is "random group randomly arrives somewhere, guy horribly kills them, handful survive and consider themselves lucky to do so"... why are they so popular?
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 10:17 AM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

I saw Grindhouse, and while I am extremely uncomfortable with all of these other films (and the whole "genre") and can't bring myself to watch them, Grindhouse doesn't fit in with them at all.

The violence in "Planet Terror", though gross, is so campy and unrealistic that the punch is usually pulled, while rape is only threatened; and the violence in "Death-Proof" is ghoulishly realistic, but it's just one color in Tarantino's palette. Meanwhile his female characters cover a pretty broad spectrum from victim to badass, and what's more important, they are allowed to talk and be real characters-- so much so that most of the negative reviews I've read cite the girls' chatty exposition as merely an inconvenient obstacle to the rampant violence that many people seem to feel entitled to.
posted by hermitosis at 10:18 AM on April 11, 2007

I'll defend the rights of adults to make and view films like these, though I have no interest in seeing them myself.

It is another story, though, to prominently display something like this (actual billboard but may be NSFW anyway), in public places where everyone is exposed to them (and it's pretty hard to look away when you're on a freeway and the thing's right on top of you.)
posted by evilcolonel at 10:18 AM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

(Oh yeah, also of note- the Thanksgiving bit I linked to is directed by Eli Roth. He also makes an appearance in it.)
posted by Dr-Baa at 10:19 AM on April 11, 2007

Since I failed to preview before my last comment, I say durrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
posted by Dr-Baa at 10:23 AM on April 11, 2007

The problem isn't that these movies exist, it's the degree with which this stuff is accepted as mainstream.

A lot of my friends pointed out in movies, tv, and books when you need people to -hate- a villain, just have them rape a woman (or threaten to). It's not rape about rape- it's an easy marker to make something evil, but it's always a woman.

My usual litmus test for problematic imagery is this: do you see a mix of heroes, villains and victims? Or do you always get relegated to the latter two? It says a lot when you can never have both power and the moral right on your side. :/
posted by yeloson at 10:24 AM on April 11, 2007

Horror movies have always been objectionable. The problem has always been that the main argument against them—that it's morally wrong to watch or enjoy them—has fallen by the wayside. Nowadays, we don't care much for morals. People laugh when you say you have a moral objection.

It's interesting that there might now be a trend of using feminism to defeat the horror movies. Political objections have simply replaced moralism. Somehow we're better able to accept a political argument, even if its outcome is the same as a moral argument.

Personally, I still believe in the moral argument. You can't tell me that a collection of 200 people gathered in a dark room to watch depictions of brutal cruelty is somehow a decent or 'right' thing. It's pornography, pure and simple. It's just organised and above-board.

I despair of horror movies, and I don't watch them. When I read about them I feel as if my soul is being slowly dissolved, especially now horror films have become mainstream. My Sunday newspaper carries reviews of such movies and the reviewer praises them for their violence and gore. What the f*** is going on?

I despair of the people who create horror movies (how does one create a script with directions like, "His head is destroyed?"), and of the people who want to watch them. I don't even watch many Hollywood films nowadays because of the fashion for random harsh violence (aka the Tarrantino Effect).

Ban horror films? No. But put them underground, where they belong. They shouldn't be mainstream, any more than hard porn should be.
posted by humblepigeon at 10:25 AM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

I can kind of understand the rationale behind rape in horror movies. (but I could be way off base in my understanding) The makers of the movie want to scare the audience. The audience wants to be scared. Rape is one of the most terrifying things for both females and males, in the role of victim. Where it goes wrong is that females don't seem to enjoy being frightened in this way. (and I say that based on the articles that say that women prefer psychological thrillers to gorefests) They end up attracting those who enjoy the mysogeny of it and disgusting those who don't. As in, not causing the intended (maybe?) fear through the onscreen rape but "gorno" for guys to leer at.
posted by bobobox at 10:28 AM on April 11, 2007

I certainly think that people are within their rights to make these movies, but really it's the prominence of them that I find really surprising. Especially since the story-telling skills of the people who make these films have not exactly evolved at the same pace as their special effects.

When you only have one note to blow, I guess you have to blow it pretty hard to keep people from being able to ignore it. Hence I get to stand and look at severed fingers for ten minutes while waiting for the subway.
posted by hermitosis at 10:32 AM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

What need does the horror genre have for the manichee conception of "Good v. Evil?
posted by davy at 10:32 AM on April 11, 2007

Political objections have simply replaced moralism. Somehow we're better able to accept a political argument, even if its outcome is the same as a moral argument. Personally, I still believe in the moral argument. You can't tell me that a collection of 200 people gathered in a dark room to watch depictions of brutal cruelty is somehow a decent or 'right' thing. It's pornography, pure and simple. It's just organised and above-board.

These same sorts of moral arguments were, not long ago, used to criminalize men who owned homoerotic porn. Not to mention shutting (or shouting) down works of art as diverse as Desire Under the Elms and Clockwork Orange.

What makes your moralisms okay to push on other people's thoughts and writing?
posted by kid ichorous at 10:32 AM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

As for rating misogyny, a helpful guide is always the Mo Movie Measure;

[Alison Bechdel's strip] popularized what is now known as the Bechdel Test, also named the Mo Movie Measure or Bechdel's Law. Bechdel credits Liz Wallace for the test. The test appears in a 1985 strip entitled The Rule in which a character says that she only watches a movie if it satisfies the following requirements:

1. It has to have at least two women in it, who
2. talk to each other about,
3. something besides a man.

You would be amazed, once you start watching for it, how very very rare this kind of scene is in movies, violent and non-.
posted by emjaybee at 10:32 AM on April 11, 2007 [13 favorites]

Miike and Roth do not make the same kind of movies:

Eli Roth talks a lot of smack about all the lines he crosses, how they'll have to create another rating for him (sorry not cite), but hasn't even come close. Cabin Fever was excellent--well crafted gore and all the best stuff from the lost in the woods genre; but Hostel was laughable.

Miike is not laughable. His movies are absolutely disturbing but almost never gratuitous. The films mentioned above, Imprint and Audition, are two of his most accessible and both bring up important ideas about life's very usual horrors, voyeurism, love, revenge etc.

Neither Miike nor Roth are "pornographic" gore.
posted by ibeji at 10:34 AM on April 11, 2007

I'd always believed that violence was an aspect of nature, and that we humans, as a product of nature, would accept at least a certain level of violence around us. Perhaps even find it necessary.

But now I'm the father of a two-and-a-half year old boy. I've seen him react very strongly to depictions of violence on the television screen. I'm thinking of his loud demands that we "turn it off! turn it off!" when Woody and Buzz get into a pushy-shovey disagreement in Toy Story. I'm afraid of how he'll react to my Looney Tunes Collection when/if we get around to watching it with him.
I'm feeling very strongly that our natural reaction to violence is to retreat/withdraw. I'm feeling very strongly that our natural reaction is strong aversion to violence, and that when we "learn to accept it," we've actually lost something important to us.

I was a young teenager when we got our family's first VCR. And my parents used to babysit us when they went out by renting a few horror flicks and ordering a pizza. To their credit, however, one time they were watching The Toolbox Murders with us, and very quickly turned it off. I've seen dozens of those "classic" late-70s and 80s slasher flicks, and I always felt like they didn't do me much harm.

My son is changing my mind.

"It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted in a profoundly sick society." - Krishnamurti.
posted by I, Credulous at 10:35 AM on April 11, 2007 [5 favorites]

"Ban horror films? No. But put them underground, where they belong. They shouldn't be mainstream, any more than hard porn should be."

Because of course America is a Christian country, where mainstream is Disney. E.g., Times Square, Michael Jackson and Rush Limbaugh.
posted by davy at 10:35 AM on April 11, 2007

Who said violent misogyny was entertaining?

Pretty much the entirety of post-agriculture society. It may not be a nice thing to say about modern human beings, but we might as well admit it.

Anyway, I think these films have a pretty obvious purpose. They provide catharsis along with a chance to temporarily ditch our taboos and connect with death and pain, two important facets of life that our modern society is in denial about (and if you ask, "why the misogyny", consider that female death and pain is even more taboo than the male kind). Within a handful of generations, we've gone from being people who lived every day with pain and death to people who hide pain and death away in specialized buildings, so that no one will have to see them. It's no wonder that some people seek them out, in one form or another.

I'm not much for horror films, myself, but I definitely understand the appeal of dark subject matter in other forms of art. For me, it's a reaffirmation of life, and of death's important place in life. It's a rejection of unnatural, denial-ridden, indoctrinated "morality", in favor of the world as it is. It's clearly not for everybody, but I think some of you are overstating how horrible it really is. Much, much worse things are going on in real life, right now, at our behest, and yet horror films ought to be driven into the underground? Bah.
posted by vorfeed at 10:35 AM on April 11, 2007 [3 favorites]

And my "moral objection" to watching films like these is that I refuse to participate in a cultural glorification of torture that is, now more than ever, informed by the real-life torture that our country inflicts on actual human beings.

We only pay to participate in torture fantasies because our government inconsiderately protects us from reality.
posted by hermitosis at 10:37 AM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

From a recent interview with Eli Roth (emphasis mine):

... wish I could take any credit for the Hostel 2 poster. That is wild boar meat. That’s the marketing at Lionsgate. They just put that meat. I thought that was brilliant, because the genius of that poster is that if it were hanging at the supermarket, you'd go ‘oh, let's have steak tonight,’ but in a movie theater with the words Hostel 2 – ‘that is the sickest thing I've ever seen!’ And it's all the power of suggestion and I like that. There is obviously comparisons....it's mostly aware that anytime people see women in a horror film, all they say is that all these girls are just pieces of meat and literally in Hostel Part 2, they are. They are the bait, they are the meat for these ....they are the grist for the mill. I thought it was a really smart poster and really, really disgusting. I love it.

Like most people here, my biggest problem is the fact that this level of severity is going mainstream. Witness the fact that at Target, Wolf Creek and Hostel DVDs appear on the bottom shelves - where children can easily pick them up. A blase attitude toward cruelty has taken hold, which makes me sad, more than anything else.
posted by jbickers at 10:38 AM on April 11, 2007

Yes, I. Credulous, I agree: we should let your 2 year old make the rules for our civilization. Please ask him if I'm allowed spinach.
posted by davy at 10:39 AM on April 11, 2007 [2 favorites]

I'm not sure what the term "gorno" expresses that "exploitation film" didn't already.

Roth and Zombie are leagues ahead of Aja and those god-awful men behind Saw. I actually found High Tension and the Saw flicks to be rather wholly corrupt in their modest pretensions and rampant misogyny, whereas The Devil's Rejects and Cabin Fever were witty exercises in gory weirdness.

I love cultish horror movies, but the slasher form isn't something that interests me. I've never had any interest in gore for its own sake. That said, I strongly suggest people read Carol Clover's Men, Women, and Chainsaws.

And as for female-directed remixes of horror movies - check out Near Dark, Titus, and American Psycho. And while not directed by a woman, The Descent is an interesting view in and of itself. And yeah, I know Titus isn't a horror movie per se, but check how Taymor uses Shakespeare's over-the-top gore.

As for Grindhouse, I absolutely loved it. As for any misogyny - well, in the features, Planet Terror didn't seem any more or less misogynistic than any other movie ever made, and Death Proof quite self-consciously deflates the villain's macho posturing. Your affection for (or patience with) Tarantino's dialog is going to be a big determiner of how much you like it, but it's also probably the major studio release with the most footage of women just...talking. And it was interesting, on the walk back from the theater, talking with our friends about the differences between the women who survive in that story and the women who don't, and what that said thematically.

Oh, also, the car chase was cuckoo-bananas.

I say give it a whirl and tell me what you think.

...

That Ebert bit is highly entertaining, but what does it tell us that Chaos is a tiny, obscure, faintly remembered movie that almost no one, as far as I know, enjoyed? What does it tell us that horror movies like The Grudge and The Ring are seen by many, many more people - and not just due to the major studio push?
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:39 AM on April 11, 2007

I'm for freedom of speech...which includes talking about how toxic these films are and the impact they have on the people who watch them. I don't mean they go out and commit violence , I mean they become more frightened, more anxious and more insensitive to actual feeling.

Parts of the brain do not discriminate so well between what is fake and what is real in terms of trauma. And some of these films are flat out trauma-inducing for those who see them...including the short and long-term effects.

I have yet to meet someone really connected to genuine emotions (or even their physical body) who watches horror films. But plenty of "tough", hip, caffeinated, urban folks do. They may seem just fine, but they really aren't. They're suffering. But it's hard to tell if those are the only people you spend time with.
posted by django_z at 10:42 AM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

Have a scene where a man approaches a woman and uses her sexually against her will = X rating and controversy.

Have a scene where a man approaches a woman , tortures her, and saws off her head = R rating and potential box office gold.

Lesson? Raping a woman is far worse than torturing and killing her.
posted by flarbuse at 10:44 AM on April 11, 2007

oh, and one of the most terrifying movies I've ever seen was Funny Games, written and directed (and, it seems, about to be remade) by Michael Haneke.
I shan't spoil it for you, because it's an incredible movie, but the director knew exactly how much to show you, and when to stage things off-screen...
Please-Please-Please don't let Hollywood do to it what it did to The Vanishing (remake)
posted by I, Credulous at 10:45 AM on April 11, 2007

Davy: how pithy and helpful. Thanks. You've put me in my place.
posted by I, Credulous at 10:47 AM on April 11, 2007

We only pay to participate in torture fantasies because our government inconsiderately protects us from reality.

I actually think the opposite is true. Our culture is obsessed with torture because, well, we torture. It's obviously on everyone's minds, and it needs to be explored in art. Now, I happen to feel that Hostel was a piece of shit, and Saw was just okay. But I'm not sure I can blame these movies for exploring what needs to be explored right now.

(And it really isn't fair to put Zombie, Tarrentino and Rodriguez in the same category as Saw and Hostel. Different worlds).
posted by Bookhouse at 10:48 AM on April 11, 2007

Don't mind Davy, Credulous... He's having a rough week.
posted by psmealey at 10:52 AM on April 11, 2007

I think it is right to compare these types of films to porn. There are lots of different levels of porn from Skinemax all the way down to DADV with "practically inside the vagina cam." We all have different levels of what interests us. Yay, freedom of choice!

I've personally watched and sort of enjoyed all three of the Saw movies, but I draw the line there. I own Hostel, but I've just accepted that I'm never going to watch it. For me, the simulated brutal deaths and over-the-top violence in Saw was OK, but actual simulated torture apparently is where I draw the line.

And although it is through the imperfect filter of my memory, I've yet to see a movie more disturbing than "I Spit On Your Grave."
posted by BeReasonable at 10:52 AM on April 11, 2007

I find enough horror in my daily life - no need to pay for it or watch it.
posted by homodigitalis at 12:06 PM on April 11

This is precisely, and succinctly, my point of view as well.

*Possible (?) spoiler below*

I watched the trailer for the original Saw, and couldn't believe anyone would voluntarily watch something like that. Boy, was I wrong.

My "horror" taste skews towards "Evil Dead 2" or Troma stuff. If it takes itself at all seriously, I can't watch it.

I've not seen Grindhouse yet, but intend to, as basically I'd give Tarantino a chance even if he were directing a Gilbert and Sullivan vehicle, or even gay porn. He's earned my trust. And from the comments above, it doesn't sound like a typical "horror" movie at all.

Random violence, like the accidental shooting in Pulp Fiction, is quite different from random gore. At least to me it is.
posted by Ynoxas at 10:52 AM on April 11, 2007

Also, when we say "horror" movie, are we really going to pretend that Slither, Shivers, The Birds, Don't Look Now, The Sixth Sense,, Rosemary's Baby, The Tenant, The Ring, Cabin Fever, Chaos, I Spit On Your Grave, Wolf Creek and "Tales From The Crypt" are all the same?

For those of you who don't watch horror movies - and that's fine, I'm not saying you ought to - I could put it more basically by comparing Don't Look Now to Wolf Creek. Is Don't Look Now structurally similar to, or in any way as offensive to some, as Wolf Creek?

I'm biased here because I loathe Wolf Creek and movies like it, but Don't Look Now is one of my very favorites.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:53 AM on April 11, 2007

I own Hostel, but I've just accepted that I'm never going to watch it.

This is very interesting ... did you buy it with the intention of never watching it? I'm curious as to why you own it, if it unsettles you.
posted by jbickers at 10:55 AM on April 11, 2007

I don't like those kinds of movies, so I don't watch them.

I don't see how that's to hard. Let people make whatever kind of movies they want, and if you don't like it, don't watch it.
posted by delmoi at 10:57 AM on April 11, 2007

I can't even watch movies like this because they make me fucking ill, and I'm not ashamed to admit that. There are no redeeming qualities to a movie such as Hostel and I laugh to myself reading the malapropism that is "gorno" - after turning that piece of shit film off and picking myself up off the floor I looked at my SO and said "This is nothing but porn, the majority of it violent, who would pay to see this?"

It's not even the special effects that make me sick (I considered them highly subpar in the aformentioned case), it's the idea that I'm supposed to enjoy watching some asshole scream and flop around in a chair like a fish out of water as some other asshole pokes him with a stick.

Also, I'm in my mid twenties so you can save the "Get off my lawn" comments for another time when you're feeling real saucy.
posted by prostyle at 10:57 AM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

Well stated, vorfeed!
posted by ibeji at 10:58 AM on April 11, 2007

Women in Refrigerators was made to demonstrate the sort of super-hero shenanigans XQUZYPHYR was talking about way upthread (some previous discussion here).

As for horror movies, I watch a lot of them and I'm a fairly well-adjusted person, and I resent the implication that I'm hip, urban, and caffeinated. C'mon, just because someone likes things you don't like they're dead inside?

I think what Roth and Craven are pointing to in the linked interview is that these movies are reflections of our culture at large, and they are often fascinating ones; see for instance, the Onion's list of horror films for right-wingers and left-wingers. I'm not a huge fan of either director, but Roth is on to something when he points out the link between these films becoming more mainstream and the news from the colonies.

I will say that the casual misogyny and sexual violence in evidence in a lot of these movies really bothers me, although that sort of thing bothers me in a lot of other genres as well.
posted by whir at 11:00 AM on April 11, 2007

Rodriguez and Tarantino manage to subvert the exploitation model or simply repeat the misogyny of that era?

it's not even about repeating the misogyny of the era, it's just a bad idea in itself -- Tarantino has (used to have?) a special talent for turning pulp into great -- if shallow -- fun. but Grindhouse is a movie on the private-joke level, it's Mars Attacks! with mutilation.

I'm glad it's doing badly at the box office, the last thing Hollywood needed was a huge trend of Grindhouse copycats the way Pulp Fiction spawned a thousand shit copycats
posted by matteo at 11:02 AM on April 11, 2007

(and by the way, the only good thing in Grindhouse is the trailer shot by Eli Roth, who gave us that horrible torture flick about the American students traveling to Eastern Europe)
posted by matteo at 11:04 AM on April 11, 2007

I don't like those kinds of movies, so I don't watch them.

I don't either, but I am a SciFi fan, so I watch a few shows on SpikeTV and the SciFi channel. As such I am constantly bombarded by some pretty graphic ads for them during commercial breaks.

As much as I'd like to support the idea that an artist has right to express his vision in that way, the idea of someone getting a vicarious thrill through seeing someone else being tortured (real, fake, whatever) makes me sick.

As for Tarantino, I enjoyed the relentless phony gore in Kill Bill vol 1, and I probably will see Grindhouse on DVD. However, I still think he's an asshole for his gratuitous use of the "n" word in the scene with the headless guy in the back seat of Travolta's car. It made me wish that Samuel Jackson would have picked up somethign heavy and hit him with it.
posted by psmealey at 11:05 AM on April 11, 2007

jbickers, I went through a stage where I got curious about all of these over-the-top sort of horror movies and I went out and picked up a set. I got the Saw movies, Cabin Fever and Hostel. Cabin Fever was cool, Saw I definitely was interesting, Saw II was kinda interesting. Saw III seemed like more of the same, but when I got down to watching Hostel, I just always seemed to find something else I'd rather do, including go to bed early.

Enough nights of that, and I realized I just didn't want to see it.

I've heard it isn't a good movie, but I sat through Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. I can watch a bad movie, especially if people seem to think it is special in some way. So logically, there must be seem other reason I've been avoiding it.
posted by BeReasonable at 11:07 AM on April 11, 2007

One thing people seem to be saying here is that woman aren't being exploited in horror films so long as they're strong, and fight back. But all that's happening is that women are being given a masculine overlay, nearly always by masculine script writers and directors. The same kinda things still happen to them. In some ways, from a feminist point of view, these kinds of films are even worse. The female characters are still created for the pornographic enjoyment of certain kind of men.
posted by humblepigeon at 11:08 AM on April 11, 2007

Back in the first wave of slasher gore in the mid to late '70s, you knew that if a girl was naked and/or having sex, she was going to die a particularly gruesome death, whereas the heroine would remain chaste while being chased. I have not seen these new-jack horror movies (Hostel, etc.), but I wonder if this hypocritical puritanical virgin/slut titillation/punishment dichotomy still exists in these films.
posted by Mister_A at 11:22 AM on April 11, 2007

If people who see horror films do so because they nurture a closeted desire to watch their fellow humans be tortured and killed, does that mean the critics who lauded, say, United 93 and Schindler's List nurture secret boners/ladywood for plane crashes and concentration camps? I don't doubt it.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 11:23 AM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

But all that's happening is that women are being given a masculine overlay

I'm not sure what you mean here. Are being strong and fighting back strictly masculine attributes? Or do you mean that genuinely feminine characters would approach their situations differently?

(BTW, Hostel is a pretty bad movie, though it's interesting in the way it reflects American anxiety about world opinion.)
posted by whir at 11:23 AM on April 11, 2007

OK, here's a list of a few things that happened in Sin City, which was celebrated by just about everyone who saw it:

(1) Mickey Rourke wakes up in a room whose walls were covered in women's heads, like hunting trophies.

(2) Nick Stahl beats Jessica Alba with a whip because it's the only way he can get a boner. When that doesn't work he takes out a knife.

(3) A crowd of sex-obsessed prostitutes kills a cop, and have to be rescued from their misdeed by a man.

(4) Carla Gugino, who is blatantly sexualized in her very first shot, is shot repeatedly with a machine gun after she's already dead.

(5) Bruce Willis symbolically reverses Nick Stahl's gender: He castrates him with his bare hands, then penetrates him with a knife. Only after he does these things does he kill him, by completely obliterating his head.

This is just the stuff I can remember. As far as I can remember, nobody really seemed to talk much about the copious amounts of mysogyny in this movie in the mainstream press. But here we are, talking about horror films and their blatant hatred of women. Shit like the Captivity billboard is bad news, but the problem is clearly a lot deeper.
posted by hifiparasol at 11:23 AM on April 11, 2007 [5 favorites]

I still say that Eli Roth is a no-talent ass clown. He is to horror what Riki Rachtman was to metal; completely unremarkable and annoying and yet somehow he's in with the big boys.

Showing a bunch of gore is a weak cop out to creating a genuine suspense and frightening atmosphere. Any hack can use a spring loaded cat to make an audience jump or cut an eyeball to make the audience squirm.

Watch "Rosemary's Baby" or "The Changeling", then "Hostel" and tell me which one you think took more talent to produce.
posted by Gamblor at 11:24 AM on April 11, 2007

humblepigeon writes "I despair of the people who create horror movies (how does one create a script with directions like, 'His head is destroyed?'), and of the people who want to watch them. I don't even watch many Hollywood films nowadays because of the fashion for random harsh violence (aka the Tarrantino Effect).

"Ban horror films? No. But put them underground, where they belong. They shouldn't be mainstream, any more than hard porn should be."

Wow. I despair of people who write things like that last paragraph. I don't think one should make moral arguments about fake violence -- arguments that get more strident the better the FX guys do their job. Then again, I make horror movies, so I'm obviously a drooling pervert or something.

For the record, I don't like Saw, Hostel or Turistas because they're damn boring. There is one movie that did make me uncomfortable with its violence: Bad Boys II. You know how I reacted? I just didn't watch it again.
posted by brundlefly at 11:25 AM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

I'm trying to get up the stomach to see S&Man (pronounced, "Sandman") at the Philly Film Festival this week. A lot of the horror they pick for their Danger After Dark series is way beyond my gore and torture tolerance but this sounds more thoughtful than average, especially regarding the subject at hand.

Has anyone seen this or heard anything about it?

While most genre fans' perception of the cutting edge of "underground" horror begins and ends with the likes of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Petty's film takes the viewer far below the surface, into a hell of torture and fetish films that seem to cater to sociopaths and fuel their potentially dangerous desires. Or do they? That's the question the movie poses as Petty talks to subjects that range from articulate academics (Carol Clover, author of "Men, Women, and Chainsaws") to simple and delusional actresses ("scream queen" Debbie D.) to the seemingly demented outsiders who create the gruesome films that depict the rape, torture and humiliation of (almost exclusively) female victims. There are no easy answers when filmmakers Bill Zebub, Fred Vogel and the creator of S&Man himself, Eric Rost, discuss their work (along with extremely graphic clips) and explain what motivates them to put their fans' -- and, indeed, their own -- most revolting fantasies onto film. But beware: just as you're getting your head around what these men are saying, Petty's got a stunning surprise in store..."
posted by The Straightener at 11:26 AM on April 11, 2007

Speaking as a woman and fan of horror fillms, I'm less troubled by the goryness of the Hostel/Saw torture films than I am by the fact that they're bad films and more importantly, not really scary. Part of that may derive from the fact that fake blood is fake blood, after a time, you do get sort of bored of it. Part of it comes from the fact that gratuitousness is not as interesting as suspense What you don't know is always infinitely scarier than what you do, which may account, in large part, for the success of the first "Blair Witch Project." There was a never a reveal and that, to my mind, was the cleverest thing about an otherwise pretty stupid movie. Horror movies don't have to be smart (and when they are, they usually become "thrillers," which to my way of thinking, is a different genre altogether, and why we generally don't talk about the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "Silence of the Lambs" in the same sentence), but it helps if they're scary. And seriously, I can't recall the last time I saw something billed as a horror film that kept me up at night. And maybe that's because there are at least ten more terrifying stories appearing everyday on the front page of the NYT, especially if you are inclined, as I am, to envision worst case scenarios.


I'd give Tarantino a chance even if he were directing a Gilbert and Sullivan vehicle,

I would totally go see that. "I am the motherfucking pirate king, motherfucker!"
posted by thivaia at 11:33 AM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

delmoi writes "I don't like those kinds of movies, so I don't watch them.

"I don't see how that's to hard. Let people make whatever kind of movies they want, and if you don't like it, don't watch it."

Well, I don't think anybody can really disagree with this, but I also think there's an interesting conversation to be had about what is going on in our society that makes these films (commercially) successful. The theory that it's a reflection of our society's anxiety about torture is interesting. I also think there's an interesting discussion about these films as art; just because of the conversation in this thread, I'm curious about Eli Roth. I'd like to know what made Cabin Fever good and Hostel bad. I'll probably never watch either film, though, since I don't have the stomach for this stuff.
posted by mr_roboto at 11:37 AM on April 11, 2007

I couldn't agree more about Hostel/Saw, thivaia, but I think "smartness" is an inaccurate and arbitrary way to assign genre. It's a fuzzy line between thriller and horror film, to be sure, but the distinction is certainly not intelligence.
posted by brundlefly at 11:41 AM on April 11, 2007

So just let me say that the ad campaign for "Captivity" is not only a literal sign of the collapse of humanity, it's an assault. [...] It's like being mugged (and I have been).

Et tu, Joss? That otherwise sensible people turn so righteously frothy over words and images is the single best argument for the first amendment we could ask for

Words and images. You mean culture, language, and ideas. People often fall back on the canard "it's just a word" or "it's just a image", but words and images are ideas and communication. What else do we have? They are not just important, they are central to our sentience and understanding of the world. I read that letter from Joss-- someone who, I'm guessing, has a pretty good idea of the power of images and words-- and my reaction was "And here I didn't think it was possible for me to love him any more." The festishing of "free speech" as a way to shut down conversation over what such movies or, in this case, the Captivity billboard might mean in our culture is a little bit intellectually dishonest. I believe in free speech, but I don't care much for those who lean on the First Amendment like it's a holy shield and refuse to consider the consequences of acts of hatred such as the Captivity billboard. In Canada we have laws against Hate Speech: what hate speech actually is defined as requires constant discussion, but I'm glad they're there.
posted by jokeefe at 11:41 AM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

It says something funny about the human condition such that some people can watch the relentlessly brutal violence in Hostel and Saw and be bored by it, and I can see a PG-13 movie like "The Ring" and have nightmares about it for a week.
posted by psmealey at 11:45 AM on April 11, 2007 [2 favorites]

Sin City, which was celebrated by just about everyone who saw it:

I saw it and I think it's possibly the worst American movie of the last twenty years. dobbs hated it too.
posted by matteo at 11:46 AM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

Apparently everyone else saw a different cut of Cabin Fever, to me it seemed to try to be both a comedy and horror and failed at both.

I try to avoid horror movies. When I was a kid, I had trouble sleeping for a month because of The Amityville Horror and since then I just try not to watch them.

It's strange though, because I'm fine with the occasional horrific book (most recent Chuck Palahniuk's "Rant"). Novels seem to create a more personal and less visceral horror though, and without the blatant misogyny.
posted by drezdn at 11:47 AM on April 11, 2007

jokeefe: I find it interesting that you ridicule those who "lean on the First Amendment" then immediately praise legal limitation of speech. The First Amendment is there to protect us from people who make the argument that you're making. You're right that there are consequences to words and images, and there should be. If you're going to say something offensive enough to the rest of society, you're going to have to deal with society's scorn. But I don't want any government enforcing those consequences. Part of being an adult in the world is putting up with shit that pisses you off.

I'd like to point out that, IIRC, books were banned in F. 451 because people kept getting offended by them. Race. Sex. Violence. The whole shebang.
posted by brundlefly at 11:55 AM on April 11, 2007

The Straightman, I saw S&Man at last year's South by Southwest in Austin, and it was bad. Seemed to be going in an interesting direction at first, but after awhile just boring and definitely no new enlightening or shocking ideas about voyeurism in horror or related topics. The synopsis mentioned Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer in a dismissive way, but actually that movie, in a single scene, did what S&Man was trying to do in a movie. (The scene: Henry & his roomie sit down to watch a killing they had videotaped)

Oddly, there were a decent number of horror films that year at SXSW that tried (unsuccessfully) to address similar issues. The best, most shocking and most intelligent horror film at the festival by far was The Lost by Chris Sivertson, produced by Lucky McKee (who made the excellent May). Anyone seriously interested in seeing good horror film should watch it, then read the Jack Ketchum novel.
posted by ibeji at 11:56 AM on April 11, 2007

"Have a scene where a man approaches a woman and uses her sexually against her will = X rating and controversy.

Have a scene where a man approaches a woman , tortures her, and saws off her head = R rating and potential box office gold.

Lesson? Raping a woman is far worse than torturing and killing her"

Have a scene where a man and woman agree to have sex, and then do so = XXX rating

Lesson? Consensual sex is worse than rape?
posted by mr_crash_davis at 11:56 AM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

I'd like to know what made Cabin Fever good and Hostel bad.

They were both bad.

Apparently everyone else saw a different cut of Cabin Fever, to me it seemed to try to be both a comedy and horror and failed at both.

Exactly. Was it a satire of bad horror movies, or actually a bad horror movie? Roth kept saying how it was a return to "real" horror, but he was just replaying the same cliches. It's possible to do comedy and horror (see Shaun of the Dead, for example), but Cabin Fever wasn't it.
posted by Gamblor at 11:57 AM on April 11, 2007

You're giving Sin City a lot more credit than it deserves. A lot of people didn't like it (77% on RT), and almost every positive review mentions the violence.
posted by graventy at 11:58 AM on April 11, 2007

Apologies, brundlefly

"Smart" was probably not the right word to use, certainly from my perspective. But I do think that concept plays into the way films are marketed My mother claims to hate horror films. I cannot imagine a scenario in which she would go see anything billed as such, but she saw "Silence of the Lambs" (which was critically deemed a good film) and "Hannibal" (which wasn't really) in the theater, because she believed the presence of Antony Hopkins and Jodie Foster/Julianne Moore meant the movie would be "smarter." And certainly not horror, you understand, because for her, horror is synonymous with slasher flicks and theaters full of loud teenaged boys.

And taking this out a step, the way we define film and genre, in part, explains how some films that could be could be seen as extremely misogynistic (see the comment about "Sin City" above) seldom incur the same level of controversy that shit like "Captivity" obviously does.

FWIW, I really liked "Sin City" but there you go.
posted by thivaia at 12:00 PM on April 11, 2007

By the way, those who were disappointed by the awful Hostels and Turistas of the world might find a better answer in Wolf Creek... Beautifully shot and genuinely terrifying.
posted by ibeji at 12:04 PM on April 11, 2007

Like most people here, my biggest problem is the fact that this level of severity is going mainstream.

Again, these are movies, and a lot of people are echoing hte sentiment "I can't believe people see this" but you need to consider who sees them and why.

These movies are the antithesis of new "chick lit" - novels, and movies, that revolve around three dimensional self-actualized women who do NOT always get married to the rich hunk at the end of the story, but rather learn something about themselves and what they want out of life and end the story walking off into the sunset of a great career or new city alone after having decided they don't need or want the rich guy.

The idea that women are like this is a threat to men who were raised on the 80's pap of guy gets rich and marries trophy hot girl. Hostel (and to a lesser extent saw) is about reigning the women in. The audience is comfortable with the notion of these women as sexual traps because that means that on some level they can get these women when in real life of course they can't.

That is why these gorefests rely so heavily on sex but not on the overt sexual morality stated in Halloween and followed religiously in the 80's slashers, that the good and pure girl would be the object of the killer survive, but the morally decandent would be the ones who actually got killed along the way. Then, the audience wanted (or subconsciously assumed) the pure girl would survive because that was what they were taught.

Now, the audience for these movies sides more with the killers. The films are amoral, not immoral. They are more about restoring in the disaffected male the power he perceives himself to have lost to women (and well adjusted guys who are not threatened by these women).

Before I talk about the Asian takeover of "smart" horror, I'm going to link to the film Colic but please do not click on this if you are a normal human being and the notion of violence towards babies sickens you. Also here.

What makes the Asian films attractive to US audiences is similar to what attracts them to Hostel-style dreck, which is that the formula is new and unexpected. In the case of Asian cinema, there is a morality structure at work, but it is different than what US audiences are used to.

In both the Ring and the Grudge, for example, there is the notion of children being cursed or carrying a sin of their parents. That notion as a general matter is absent in western culture, and in fact the opposite is believed to be true - children are not burdened with the sins of their parents, but get a blank slate. They begin with original sin (thfrom the predominant judeo-christian mythology operative in western culture), but this does not extend from their immediate parents.

But for the psychopath that relishes the gore fest, these films are largely unsatisfactory because they don't deliver the raw meat the way these other films do.

For me personally, I'm ashamed to admit that I have seen a lot of these gorno movies (I'm stealing that term, by the way) only because I see a lot of all kinds of movies, and they are never scary. Gore is not supposed to be scary, it's supposed to be exciting and arousing in a sick way.

I have never been as scared watching a movies as when this image appeared for a split second in the Exorcist. The face is so geometrically wrong and it appears for so little time that your brain only has time to register it's wrongness. A prolonged viewing of the picture reveals a rather sloppy make-up job, but when you only have four frames to see it, you don't notice that. The face sits squarely at the bottom of the uncanny valley.

For a truly modern American horror film, you need look no further than David Lynch's Lost Highway.
posted by Pastabagel at 12:13 PM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

I saw it and I think it's possibly the worst American movie of the last twenty years. dobbs hated it too.
posted by matteo at 1:46 PM on April 11

Oh come on. This is absurd on its face. I understand exaggerating going for effect, but come on. Ridiculous.

The last 20 years have contained multiples of Police Academy, Home Alone, Beethoven (the dog), Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and The Never Ending Story.

Without even stopping to think very hard, you could come up with 50 movies in the last 20 years that are worse than Sin City.

Sin City was brilliant in my estimation, I figure mostly due to the source material (which I've not read).

It was impeccably shot, edited, and scored. It was unlike anything else I've seen, and I appreciated it. I disliked some of the hyper-violent scenes, but overall, the effect was so good, and so well done, that I approve.

Get over yourself. Sin City was worse than Honey I Shrank the ________? Come the fuck on.
posted by Ynoxas at 12:14 PM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

Am I the only person who liked Hostel? Brutal movie, but I actually thought it was one of the smartest horror movies in the last couple years.
posted by mkultra at 12:17 PM on April 11, 2007

jokeefe: The festishing of "free speech" as a way to shut down conversation over what such movies or, in this case, the Captivity billboard might mean in our culture is a little bit intellectually dishonest. I believe in free speech, but I don't care much for those who lean on the First Amendment like it's a holy shield and refuse to consider the consequences of acts of hatred such as the Captivity billboard. In Canada we have laws against Hate Speech: what hate speech actually is defined as requires constant discussion, but I'm glad they're there.

I'm certainly not trying to silence you, Jokeefe, and I wonder where in my words you might have found that meaning. It does strike me as contradictory that you might in the same breath advocate censorship against "hate speech," and then accuse the other side of "shouting down conversation," but this is another matter.

If we're going to talk about intellectual honesty here, I find Whedon's age-old hyperbole about cultural collapse unmoving. His MacKinnon-inspired analogy between an image and a violent mugging is rhetoric, not resemblance. If your side is right, why not make a pragmatic argument?

1. What are the demonstrable, clear consequences of the Captivity billboard being visible in public?

2. What are the legal and political consequences of laws that prohibit such billboards? What precedence do they set?

3. Why should the arguments in 1 prevail against the arguments in 2?

Words and images. You mean culture, language, and ideas. People often fall back on the canard "it's just a word" or "it's just a image", but words and images are ideas and communication. What else do we have?

Jokeefe, I completely agree - and this is precisely why I don't believe in a government's right to legislate thought.
posted by kid ichorous at 12:18 PM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

And to think I was kicking myself for not getting into the theater to catch Sin City when it was there...y'all are making me glad I didn't go, considering my frame of mind at the time. I understand there's a lot of similarly gratuitous violence against women in 300, so I guess I'll save the eight bucks and settle for Thucydides' version, since nobody ever mentioned it in conjunction with rape-porn.
posted by pax digita at 12:20 PM on April 11, 2007

If people who see horror films do so because they nurture a closeted desire to watch their fellow humans be tortured and killed, does that mean the critics who lauded, say, United 93 and Schindler's List nurture secret boners/ladywood for plane crashes and concentration camps? I don't doubt it.

That is a completely valid analogy, since the events of Saw III are matters of well-documented historical fact, whose re-enactment accomplishes something positive.

For the record: I think United 93 is a snuff film, in much the same way that the new wave of shock horror films are snuff films. There's no message imparted, no attempt by the filmmakers to do anything but rub their hands in glee as they cackle merrily about the fistfuls of dollars they make by tugging woodenly at the basest level of human emotion. They don't even go so far as to establish the basic elements of story-telling; what are we possibly supposed to take away from either film? The only difference is their target market: Hostel aims mostly for the ever-so-slightly-sociopathic 17-year-old guy who used to torture the neighbor's cats.
posted by Mayor West at 12:21 PM on April 11, 2007

My problem with Hostel was that the first twenty or thirty minutes of it (or however long it was) was incredibly boring and did nothing but portray the main characters as dickwads. Then, uninspired gore. Then, in the last five minutes (spoiler, I guess) you learn that there's actually a pretty interesting story going on with the idea that rich people are paying for their chance to kill someone, and then, quick, end the movie before it might actually get interesting!
posted by Bookhouse at 12:22 PM on April 11, 2007

The idea that women are like this is a threat to men who were raised on the 80's pap of guy gets rich and marries trophy hot girl. Hostel (and to a lesser extent saw) is about reigning the women in. The audience is comfortable with the notion of these women as sexual traps because that means that on some level they can get these women when in real life of course they can't.

I can't speak for the Saw films, but this strikes me as a pretty reductive reading of Hostel. I don't think gender is even really that important concern to the film; it's more about the haves and the have-nots.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 12:31 PM on April 11, 2007

That is a completely valid analogy, since the events of Saw III are matters of well-documented historical fact, whose re-enactment accomplishes something positive.

I'd argue it's valid because "accomplishing something positive" is surely in the eye of the beholder, right? No cite, sadly, but I remember hearing an interview with John Waters years ago wherein he said something like, "Saving Private Ryan? I got more out of [pron epic] Shaving Ryan's Privates." That one's subject is powerful and important doesn't necessarily mean that one has made a film that's worth a damn, and I defy a few reels of celluloid to accomplish anything more impressive than going 'round and 'round for a couple hours in the dark.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 12:40 PM on April 11, 2007

Like some others in this thread, I must also mention that lumping together every movie in a genre is simply ridiculous. Saying "all horror movie fans are X" is incredibly small-minded, and furthemore, is hurtful to the real issues. Putting Hostel together with Rosemary's Baby, or Jacob's Ladder, or any other SMART horror movie is reactionary and ignorant.

While this may not be the biggest issue at hand, it really frustrates me.
posted by ORthey at 12:42 PM on April 11, 2007

While this may not be the biggest issue at hand, it really frustrates me.

It's not even an issue in this thread.. As far as it goes, the contentions here are about misogyny, rape and graphic torture. The horror genre issue is incidental.
posted by psmealey at 12:48 PM on April 11, 2007

I'm reminded that the posters and billboards for Road to Gauntanamo were pulled for being too explicit, while Saw II was being advertised with this.
posted by anotherpanacea at 12:50 PM on April 11, 2007

And to think I was kicking myself for not getting into the theater to catch Sin City when it was there... I understand there's a lot of similarly gratuitous violence against women in 300, so I guess I'll save the eight bucks and settle for Thucydides' version, since nobody ever mentioned it in conjunction with rape-porn.

Sin City was a good film, though after seeing 300 I am fairly certain that wasn't on account of Frank Miller. However, I will weigh in and say that 300 wasn't bad because of any violence against women it may have included--and there was some--but because of the rampant racism and homophobia. The portrayal of Xerxes and his army took this to cartoonish extremes.

It's also the only movie that I've ever seen that literally twisted lines from Bertrand Russell into George-Bushian "freedom isn't free, you have to kill and die for it" rhetoric. That bit came near the end, unfortunately, because if it had come at the beginning, my subsequent departure would have saved me an hour and a half of my life.
posted by voltairemodern at 1:00 PM on April 11, 2007

Indeed, the protagonists of Hostel are men, and most of the women in the film are actually antagonists, not victims, so I don't really see how Hostel can be seen as reigning women in. I also don't see how one could easily side with the killers in Hostel, which is all about having squirmy sympathy with the characters being tortured.

(Hostel spoilers ahoy) One of the tropes in Hostel that is common to slashers of its type (which is to say that Roth ripped it off from the likes of Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes) is the reversal at the end, where the victim takes on the role of his attacker. I think there is a potential here for these movies to make some interesting statements about the nihilism of violence, although in my experience they mostly gesture vaguely in that direction rather than really exploring it. (Park Chan-wook's Sympathy for Mr Vengeance is an excellent take on this theme, though it's not a genre-typical horror film.)

Regarding the many different types of horror, I agree that we shouldn't oversimplify the genre, though I think in the context of this thread most folks have been using "horror" as a shorthand for the mainstream torture-centric films such as Saw, Hostel, and so on. (I can only hope that the term "gorno" will drift quietly from the public discourse, never to be seen again.)
posted by whir at 1:04 PM on April 11, 2007

Boy, that "Colic" shit takes this to a whole 'nother place. I've always wondered when that one last, blessed taboo would be deep-sixed, and it appears that it's about to be. Can't wait to see the furious rationalizing that will surely take place over that; about how it represents some post-modern reaction to the ennui we all feel about the war on terror and how the baby's hand represents our own lost innocence and all the usual bullshit. That crosses a fucking line.
posted by jbickers at 1:15 PM on April 11, 2007

Am I the only person who liked Hostel? Brutal movie, but I actually thought it was one of the smartest horror movies in the last couple years.

No, I liked it too. But I wouldn't call it "smart." Clever, perhaps. I could only say it was one of the smartest/cleverest of the past couple years by virtue of the fact that I only see 1-2 horror movies each year.
posted by Martin E. at 1:17 PM on April 11, 2007

Oh, and Pastabagel: I think this is the image you were trying to link to? (The site seems to block direct linking.)

I'm not sure if I agree with your analysis of the cultural roots of Asian horror movies, either, at least as far as the "sins of the fathers" idea. I can see a little of that in Ringu, but part of what made the Ju-On movies scary was that the violence was so random - ie, you just had to visit the house, or know someone who did, to incur the wrath of the ghosts.
posted by whir at 1:18 PM on April 11, 2007

I can't speak for the Saw films, but this strikes me as a pretty reductive reading of Hostel. I don't think gender is even really that important concern to the film; it's more about the haves and the have-nots.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:31 PM on April 11

The have/have nots dichotomy isn't a visceral appeal of the film. The students in hostel are "haves" - there is a mention that this is their last big blowout before grad school or work. So you have haves (the people paying to kill) using have-nots (the townspeople) to kill other haves (the students)?

In the movie, the women are the lure. Ever single woman in the film is easily accessible sexually - the prostitutes in Amsterdam, the girls at the club, and the girls at the hotel.

Perhaps your suggesting that the women, who are have-nots will willingly have sex with the students, who are "haves"? I suppose so, but that isn't a universal structure of these kids of movies (and it certainly doesn't work for Saw, where there isn't really any sex).

In my opinion, these kinds of films, Saw, Hostel, etc. have a common ancestor in The Cube, which was basically a movie that walked the audience through various ways of killing people in a grisly fashion. But Cube at least had an internal moral structure - (SPOILER) the mentally handicapped guy is the only survivor because he is an uncorrupted childlike innocent. Everyone else in the film, including the smart math girl, are corrupted by something (in her case, it's knowledge). But the plot structure of the movie - constant brutal killing for no reason and no explained reason but which the audience very readily accepts - is a prototype of the Saw films, which in turn spawned others.

In fact, in Saw, the overly contrived killed methods make no sense unless you consider them from the audience's perspective. Why would a killer devise such elaborate and complex systems to kill people if the only one who will witness it is the victim. But of course those killings exist for our benefit, not for the benefit of anyone in the story.

I'm reminded that in the movie Halloween, only 4 people are killed, none of them graphically. The evil is really only implied through pacing and cinematography. Contrast this with Saw and Hostel, whose color palettes appear limited to wet green ichor and wet brown rust, respectively.
posted by Pastabagel at 1:18 PM on April 11, 2007

Sin City was worse than Honey I Shrank the ________? Come the fuck on.

much worse, as anybody with a vague grasp of what is cinema understands -- Honey I Shrank Whatever is family entertainment, lame, yes, but it is what it is, it's stuff to entertain children, not different from the Teletubbies or whatever, it's cinema as babysitting device. tame, inoffensive. stupid for adults, Ok for children.

Rodriguez, a spectacularly untalented director who mistakes fast cutting for storytelling and for whom even comics are way too subtle and difficult to follow, it's not a visceral filmmaker -- he's not Peckinpah. he's a hack who creates cartoonish ripoffs of Peckinpah movies with no recognizable human behavior and no value whatsoever, except as a tool to titillate horny geeks who actually get off the gleeful torture of women and as a tool to make a quick, cheap buck at the box office for his corporate masters.

what's even funnier, this so-called rebel is laughing all the way to the bank -- he thrives in the system that he pretends to be distant from. real rebels such as Welles and Fuller got ultimately kicked out by Hollywood, Rodriguez is perfect for the cynical industry he's serving -- he's the perfect hack.

Honey I Shrunk the Kids is much more honest than Sin City -- it's not trying to con anyone. the joke of course is on those who don't realize this.
posted by matteo at 1:23 PM on April 11, 2007 [4 favorites]

Like most people here, my biggest problem is the fact that this level of severity is going mainstream.

Over a hundred comments, and only anotherpanacea's alluded to the answer: these films are popular at this moment in history because they're nothing other than the return of the repressed.

Just as all science fiction is really about this moment, it's sorta obvious to me that the current wave of torror (torture+horror, just made it up, sorry) flicks is a funhouse-mirror reflection of Gitmo and Abu Ghraib. You can't get this stuff out of the conscience once it takes up residence there: blood will always out.
posted by adamgreenfield at 1:24 PM on April 11, 2007

Er, "reining" in, duh.
posted by whir at 1:31 PM on April 11, 2007

what's even funnier, this so-called rebel is laughing all the way to the bank -- he thrives in the system that he pretends to be distant from. real rebels such as Welles and Fuller got ultimately kicked out by Hollywood, Rodriguez is perfect for the cynical industry he's serving -- he's the perfect hack.
posted by matteo at 4:23 PM on April 11


I completely agree that he doesn't have the eye, but the reason he thrives is because he can make movies on the cheap, often 5 times cheaper than the "system" would make them. It's amazing to me that he gets any credit at all for whatever about Sin city is interesting. He took the comic book and used it as a storyboard. He shot it exactly the way it appears in the book.

Far more difficult, and more brilliant, for Kubrick to take a book like the Shining, which at the time was considered a very scary book, and turn it into a masterpiece of cinema that was as scary as the book but for completely different reasons.
posted by Pastabagel at 1:37 PM on April 11, 2007

To support matteo's point, consider this sin city trailer to this trailer for the aforementioned Exorcist.

Both have that a black & white look, the Exorcists being considerably lower-fi than sin City, but which one has more impact?
posted by Pastabagel at 1:42 PM on April 11, 2007

That one's subject is powerful and important doesn't necessarily mean that one has made a film that's worth a damn, and I defy a few reels of celluloid to accomplish anything more impressive than going 'round and 'round for a couple hours in the dark.

Eh, that's true. I suppose it's hard to quantify the value of a film in any sort of objective, meaningful way, but there's just something so incredibly vapid about this entire genre. I guess, in a way, they're no different than slasher flicks of twenty years ago, but they just seem to much cheaper and more tawdry. There's no one to root for, and it feels like the underlying message is nothing but 'There exists in this world great evil. We're going to caricature it by eviscerating these co-eds.'
posted by Mayor West at 1:47 PM on April 11, 2007

I also don't see how one could easily side with the killers in Hostel, which is all about having squirmy sympathy with the characters being tortured.

If anyone has any doubt that the people who seek these movies out are relishing the violence as much as the killers, i.e. they want to see the people die, you need look no further than the comments posted on youtube clips of these movies. (note, restricted to logged in users).
posted by Pastabagel at 1:51 PM on April 11, 2007

I was hoping someone else would bring this up so I didn't have to, but Captivity, the billboard ads for which disturbed Jill Pollard so much in jbicker's first link (I share her outrage), has had a ten plus year run and many private showings in real life not so far away and no time at all ago, in and about Ciudad Juarez:

It is almost 12 years since the brutal cycle of abductions and murders of young women began in Ciudad Juarez in northern Mexico. Almost 400 women and girls have been murdered and more than 70 remain missing in the cities of Juarez and Chihuahua since 1993. Police and government officials consistently failed to adequately investigate the growing number of deaths....

The father of Maria Isabel Nava, for example, reported his daughter missing to the Special Prosecutor’s Office handling the Juarez murders on January 4, 2000...
Her body was found 23 days later. According to an autopsy, she had apparently been held in captivity for two weeks before being killed.



The service-minded and philanthropic creators of Captivity surely merely seek to make the delights previously the privilege only of the elite few who could afford to stage the spectacle of the abduction, rape, torture, sexual mutilation, and murder of these young women available to like-minded members of the general public.
posted by jamjam at 1:51 PM on April 11, 2007

I've enjoyed, to some extent, most of the movies listed in this thread that I've seen. Some much more than others. Some made me very uncomfortable, but for some reason, I'm okay with that from time to time. I never tortured animals as a kid, never so much as took a magnifying glass to an insect, I even skipped the day we dissected frogs in high school.

But I do like my caffeine. I never realized that affected my enjoyment of horror movies until django_z pointed it out (not to mention it must mean I'm "suffering," even if I don't realize it). Thanks!
posted by Roommate at 1:51 PM on April 11, 2007

It's not even an issue in this thread

Come on, man. Can we not discuss several things at once?
posted by ORthey at 1:53 PM on April 11, 2007

And yeah, I've never understood the entire slasher-film genre in itself. I just don't get why people pay ten bucks to watch people brutally suffer and be tortured on-screen.

Catharsis. You've never dealt with an asshole boss/teacher/parent/pick your authority figure and fantasized about blowing their heads off in spectacualr fashion?
posted by jonmc at