New Craven-Produced Movie
I'm ambivalent about the new wave of Torture Porn type horror. I didn't like the remake of Texas Chainsaw, which reminded me too closely of the serial killer texts I was reading for class at the time. Never managed to sit though a Saw movie and walked away from the Hills Have Eyes remake at the rape scene - it left me not just horrified, but feeling like I needed to burn my skin off and vomit at the same time.
Hostel was on the border of what I enjoy, mostly because for all the voyeuristic torture, it did what the best horror movies do. I think it was Robin Wood who said that porn makes the subtext of a mainstream movie into text, while horror subverts it - thus, in a mainstream movie you talk to your shrink about your mother, in porn you fuck your mother and in horror you kill your mother. Hostel took the idea of Americans exploiting the new world order of global capitalism (everything can be purchased, for the right price), and twisted it. Of course Hostel is also credited with creating the whole Torture Porn genre, where extreme violence is offered up almost in place of sexual excitement, thus branching the divide between porn and horror, and inviting us to step into the mindframe of a pure sadist - not just horrified by the violence or enjoying a cathartic release, but reveling in presentations of excruciating misery and pain for its own sake.
(Torture Porn is not actually new - Texas Chainsaw, Hills Have Eyes, Last House on the Left helped to define the horror genre back in the 70s, and they were arguably works of both exploitation and art, taking their inspiration from stories and images of the Vietnam War and feeding into our collective fear of random human evil.)
While that's interesting to me as both a former student of psychology and cultural studies, it's not my personal pleasure as far as cinema goes.
That said, I'm very curious to see the new remake of The Last House on the Left. The original is Wes Craven's first film, way back in 1972. The violence was (for the time) not only excessive, but realistic - so much so that it was banned in Britain for a while. The new version has Craven producing and was co-written by the guy who wrote Red Eye - which is one of my favorite thrillers ever. So I'm hopeful.
The trailer is certainly excellent, especially with the juxtaposition of an almost gentle cover of Sweet Child of Mine with the violence shown in those few clips.
http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/thelasthouseontheleft/large_t1.html
Hostel was on the border of what I enjoy, mostly because for all the voyeuristic torture, it did what the best horror movies do. I think it was Robin Wood who said that porn makes the subtext of a mainstream movie into text, while horror subverts it - thus, in a mainstream movie you talk to your shrink about your mother, in porn you fuck your mother and in horror you kill your mother. Hostel took the idea of Americans exploiting the new world order of global capitalism (everything can be purchased, for the right price), and twisted it. Of course Hostel is also credited with creating the whole Torture Porn genre, where extreme violence is offered up almost in place of sexual excitement, thus branching the divide between porn and horror, and inviting us to step into the mindframe of a pure sadist - not just horrified by the violence or enjoying a cathartic release, but reveling in presentations of excruciating misery and pain for its own sake.
(Torture Porn is not actually new - Texas Chainsaw, Hills Have Eyes, Last House on the Left helped to define the horror genre back in the 70s, and they were arguably works of both exploitation and art, taking their inspiration from stories and images of the Vietnam War and feeding into our collective fear of random human evil.)
While that's interesting to me as both a former student of psychology and cultural studies, it's not my personal pleasure as far as cinema goes.
That said, I'm very curious to see the new remake of The Last House on the Left. The original is Wes Craven's first film, way back in 1972. The violence was (for the time) not only excessive, but realistic - so much so that it was banned in Britain for a while. The new version has Craven producing and was co-written by the guy who wrote Red Eye - which is one of my favorite thrillers ever. So I'm hopeful.
The trailer is certainly excellent, especially with the juxtaposition of an almost gentle cover of Sweet Child of Mine with the violence shown in those few clips.
http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/thelasthouseontheleft/large_t1.html