Starbird said:
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.
Which film, I'm curious?
That said if it's a horror movie, I'd say your big problem is that your not really a true horror fan, which is true of most people. That's not an insult or elitism, despite how it might sound, just a statement of fact, and something I've touched on a few times before.
Horror by it's nature strives to take people outside of their comfort zone entirely, it's the opposite of being tasteful or within your limits. Horror is by definition an unpleasant sensation and not something everyone can learn to enjoy, real horror fans oftentimes find themselves enjoying the experience retroactively and seek ways to get the same kind of rise out of them.
Most of what passes as horror is at best dark fantasy, out not to offend anyone, where by it's nature real horror is going to be VERY offensive to most people (hence the point). It recycles the expected cliques, maybe throws out some gore, and often times relies on jump scares (shock as opposed to horror) and incoherence (disguised as the unknown being scary) to carry themselves. It's like visiting your average mass-entertainment fun house, but on film. There is nothing wrong with such movies, and some are quite good, but I am reluctant to really consider them real horror, the same as I tend not to consider most of Dean Koontz and Steven King's works as horror, being more in the "Dark Fantasy" or "Thriller" category. Most real horror writers due to by definition not writing for a mainstream audience tend to be fairly small press, re-labeled "extreme horror" or maybe "bizzaro Fiction", most book stores won't carry them as a result guys like Bryan Smith and Edward Lee remain on the fringes (where they arguably belong).
As a general rule "leaving the details to the imagination of the consumer" is lazy and not much of a horror technique, though it can be used well in foreshadowing for when you plan to spell it out in detail later. As a general rule, a real horror fan is paying for someone to shock and offend them, not to do the work themselves. What's more one thing about horror is that fans tend to become jaded, so it takes more and more to scare real fans and get the same results. Believe it or not but one can sort of become anathetized towards some girl getting raped by a mutant redneck with three penises each weeping from infected sores or something similar. Once you've "seen" or read the same thing a dozen times it simply becomes expected, while a real horror writer it's pretty easy to know what's coming when someone gets off a bus in Luntville (Edward Lee's equivalent to Steven King's Castle Rock).
I considered "Saw" (much less so with Hostel) one of the last few attempts to do real horror, and part of that was due to how many people these movies offended in a genuine sense and had them attacking the movies for taking them outside of their comfort zone with all the gore and sadistic torture being right there in detail. That did a lot to separate the genera fans from those that aren't. Of course after 7 movies things started to fall apart because even genera fans stop getting a reaction when seeing variations on the same basic thing. Just like the mutant redneck rapist, you can only see someone forced to self-mutilate so many times before it becomes predictable and loses it's impact. It's like in a lot of Edward Lee's books where you'd actually be more surprised if the mutant redneck catches the girl, drops his pants, and his penis isn't some grotesque affront to nature.
Don't get me wrong, there is no problem with liking and disliking certain things, I enjoy a lot of "fun house horror movies" when well done, and even the most tired bit of formula writing can still be entertaining when well done. I'm writing this actually not so much because of you, but because of all the responses, and how it seems like I run into this same thing on The Escapist, with people complaining when a horror movie got them. Torturing some old lady with acid really offended and disgusted you? That's actually GOOD that's how your supposed to feel, your human and have a soul. A horror fan is someone who actually comes to crave that kind of negative reaction and being brought well outside their comfort zone. What actually achieves this is different for different people. A while after the movie a real horror movie fan would be looking for "acid tub grannies" and recommending movies put stuff like that into them.
I'll also say that I'm kind of weird as a horror fan, because one thing I appreciate in my horror is an eventual happy ending (even if the big bad is poised to return), it's not a requirement, but I always like seeing how the scales are tipped even in the most insane no-win scenario, and even the most charismatic bad guy eventually get theirs. That's also one of my problems with Steven King, Karma doesn't always balance out within the stories themselves (though in the big picure via The Dark Tower series which ties all of his works together it usually does). To me anyone can simply create an endless sequence of depravity and a bad guy who always gets away, when done well, the twist and the table turning oftentimes being among the most creative bits. In victory it's also when the writer can fully explain their concepts, which is oftentimes why I feel a lot of horror writers like to just have the bad guy get away with it, it allows them to be lazy and not have to actually work to explain their weirdness in a cohesive way... and anyone can just dump out random weirdness, it takes a real master to produce it and then form a pattern at the end and have it be satisfying.
That said I myself have been looking for some movie I heard about here that was supposed to be doing well on the indie circuits. Something about some sorority running a funhouse around Halloween time, and a couple of other girls using it to kill them for something really bad they did in the past. I can't remember the title which is why I haven't been able to find it to see if it's actually any good (whatever style it's in). I didn't think Bob was the one who mentioned it, but perhaps he was, is this the movie you saw out of curiousity?
