Does Torture Spoil Movies/Games For You?

[Starbird]

Watched the Moviebob review of a recent film and since he and I generally seem to see eye to eye on this sort of movie and so I made quite an effort to get a hold of it.

Saw it. And...ugh. Moviebob, you've let me down to be honest.

Oh, it had some good bits. Awesome gore. And don't get me wrong, I'm a gorehound of note - of the Peter Jackson variety. But the torture porn side of it ramps way up into the squickish in far too many scenes. From grandmothers having acid poured into their mouths (and other really skin crawling stuff with acid) to a ton of other stuff...I really didn't enjoy it.

I wonder if maybe I'm just a wuss. But I find stuff like this tends to spoil a movie for me rather than enhancing it.

Is anyone else like this? I can think of a few other films/games that similarly disturbed me enough to stop me enjoying other things about them. Bioshock: Infinite stayed with me for a long time after and reading a bit about the expansions, I don't even dare touch them.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Torture doesn't, torture porn does. As in torture that's portrayed with a pornographic sensibility, like the Saw and Hostel movies.

 

[Starbird]

I steer away from anything torturey; it's miserable, disgusting and in no way entertaining. I find the popularity of films like Saw and Hostel disappointing.

Saw 1 was actually pretty good. The 'torture porn' was mostly implied and seldom that graphic and the concept/execution of the film was really solid. Not my favorite film ever, but definitely one I enjoyed.

After that though they ramped the torturey stuff way the hell up and downplayed everything else. Watched 2, sort of enjoyed it but had to skip some parts. Watched part of 3, turned it off in disgust.

 

[Dragonbums]

The most torture I can handle is punching and kicking. Anything else beyond that and I want to nope the fuck out of there. So in general the mere mention of torture in any type of media is enough to make me not watch it. It's an super unpleasent thing to watch for me and I feel disgustingly squeemish.

Major props to those who can tolerate that stuff I suppose.

 

[Slitzkin]

I'm fine with it. The portrayal of torture in fiction is not something that bothers me. However, I am not saying that I enjoy it, merely that it does not affect me.

Though it is for those that are more interested in semantics than I to conclude what qualifies as torture. Does the rape scene in Irreversible qualify as torture? Does the entirety of Salo, 120 days of Sodom qualify as torture? I'd say so. I'm not interested in watching/reading that sort of perversion of human life for pleasure. I will say that the torture scenes in the Metal Gear Solid series are always very interesting as is the torture scene in GTAV.

 

[Knight Captain Kerr]

No. Torture like basically anything in fiction can be done well or done poorly. The Wind That Shakes the Barley had a torture scene (removing fingernails with pliers) that I thought really added to the film.

 

[the December King]

As a horror fan, I don't mind torture if it is implemented well into the narrative- I actually enjoyed Hostel. I didn't like the Saw series, but that was because I was a little tired of the smug set-ups. Crazy can be fun initially, but often it starts to get tedious, especially sanctimonious preaching and lesson-teaching from psychos.

Oddly enough, however, I am often quite ready to stop watching a movie if an animal is hurt or killed (in the story, obviously- modern movies do not show real animals being mistreated, for the most part). It saddens me no end.

And since killing animals like pets and stuff are 'canaries in the coal mine' of proving how serious a psycho/murderer/evil force/ghost/monster is, it's really surprising that I've watched any horror movies at all...

 

[DanteRL]

It really depends. Violence in general bothers me if its gratuitious or too graphic, specially if it's against innocent people. Screw movies like Irreversible, Saw or Serbian Movie (also why the first gets so much praise is beyond me).

On the other hand, I have no problem watching your regular Jack Bauer type punching someone asking for the location of the bomb. Or seeing some bad guy meet his doom.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

And here's a sentence that I didn't think I'd ever write: I'm fine with torture, but it really depends on how they do it.

Now, torture porn? That all depends. I think Saw did it the best, and then everyone else decided that they had to do that and it just became stupid and unnecessary. Hostel 1 and 2 were the worst offenders in that, in my opinion.

I think putting torture just for the sake of having it without context is just a waste of everyone's time. If there's a reason to actually do it and actually have some weight and context around it then I'm fine with it.

Then again, I'm a pretty broken individual, so make of that what you will.

 

[Abomination]

I'm not a fan of gore at all. I don't watch movies to see people torn apart as I feel it's the lowest of the possible low-brow production. Torture should be a story element/plot point, not the entire story.

Thus I don't watch slasher/horror movies. Doesn't tickle my fancy and I especially won't watch torture porn.

I was okay with "Repo" though, but that's because there was more to the story than people having their body parts removed.

 

[Ramus]

Fine with "hollywood" torture, aka Jack Bower. Not a big fan of "torture porn", I don't not like it for any ideological reasons, it's just not my kind of genre. I'm not really into horror or gore either, probably similar to abominations views above. If its part of the story that's fine, but if its the entire story, yawn.

 

[elvor0]

Ehhhh, it's depends on the setting. I wouldn't say it turns me off in any setting, just like most people here, not a big fan of the torture porn genre. Beyond the first time I saw "Saw", thus popularizing the genre in the west for clones to trot out; yeah they're visceral, but don't exactly evoke an emotion in me, because I know what I'm going in for and it's just so mindlessly cruel and that it loses all meaning, especially when there's nothing else in the film.

Enexpectedly guy forced to saw his own arm off to escape a gruesome fate half way through the movie = actually visceral and emotionally invoking. Watching a guy forced to saw his own arm off for 2 and a half hours, knowing that's going to happen from the get go is just boring and not in the the least bit shocking. Even just being gruesome, I've never been squemish when it comes to film, but I was actually a little shaken from that bit in Thrones in S4E9 because it was so, SO unexpected and brutal, wheras I never so much as blinked at Saw, it's sequels or endless clones.

Loved the shit out of that mission in GTA 5 however, bit dissapointed that the tank only had water in it and not petrol, I had "Stuck in the middle with you" playing and everything. The torture scenes in the MGS games work really well, not only within the setting, but also because of the way they involved the player.

 

[DOOM GUY]

Nah, not at all, I mean, stuff like Saw or Hostel is pretty fucking stupid, but a torture scene won't spoil shit for me.

 

[Mangod]

Depends on how graphic you make it. When it comes to torture, I've always felt that torture scenes are best when they leave the horrors being inflicted on the victim to the imagination of the audience [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoryDiscretionShot]. The reason I dislike "torture porn" is because it's not horrifying, it's just disgusting. If you're goal is to horrify me, then let me frighten myself; all you have to do is provide a length of rope, and then let me hang myself.

 

[Risingblade]

I honestly can't recall any torture scenes from any movies or games. I'm sure they're have been some but none come to mind so I'm gonna go with no.

 

[one squirrel]

Well, I've never been tortured while watching a movie, but I assume getting my fingernails pulled would kind of make it difficult to enjoy a film.

Oh, you mean torture in the movie? No, not at all. I've never seen a film coming even close to the horror you can find in the internet. Most of times it's just comical.