The later FD movies have pretty horrific torture porny ways of dying like a woman frying to death in a tanning bed. The first movie had a guy slowly strangulate on a bathroom floor.
I haven't seen the later ones, and it sounds like maybe I don't need to. The first couple, at least, had some protracted death scenes, but the tone always seemed to be kinda goofy. "Haha, this shit is crazy!" The woman-burning-to-death-in-her-house scene, for example, wasn't protracted to highlight her suffering, it was protracted to show the ridiculous happenstance that went into her being killed. If it were torture porn, then after all the crazy hijinks had occurred, the camera would focus on her for another five minutes showing her flesh melt off her bones and doing extreme close-ups of her bones singeing.
It's an issue of tone, an issue of mise-en-scene. That said, I don't think there's a hard definition, and there are certainly varying degrees of torture-y-ness.
Inherent to the idea of torture itself is, I think, a person being tortured and a person doing the torturing. Torture is a verb which essentially means directed suffering; somebody has to direct that suffering. While there are a couple of exceptions that blur the line*, a character suffering on screen in an undirected fashion is not torture and therefore cannot be torture porn. The kills in Final Destination can't be torture porn because, arguably, nobody is doing the torturing. The protagonists theorize that "death" is trying to kill them, but as far as I know the movies do not necessarily support that view, or portray the supernatural force as intelligent. There's a difference between "This conscious spirit is angry and wants us to suffer" and "The universe acts unknowingly to correct an imbalance or error, and sometimes this is painful because death is sometimes painful." The FD films (so far as I know; I haven't seen the later ones) don't do much in terms of allowing you to read the Rube Goldberg sequences as the creations of a sentient, vengeful spirit.
So, basically, I don't think it's an issue of tone or excessiveness, I think it's that torture porn requires somebody to torture somebody else, and the vague notion of "death" doing things in the FD series doesn't qualify.
On FD: I'd argue that Death in at least the first couple of films is given a certain degree of anthropomorphism. He's maybe not really a character, per se, but he still has some character, if that makes sense. Especially given some of the later deaths, I think one could argue that he's rather pissed off, and taking it out on the victims with increasingly violent deaths. I'm sure that's largely incidental to the film's intention to show us crazy-ass death scenes, but I still think it does give Death a certain feel of vengeful. That's just my reading.
As far as definitions of torture-porn goes, I think yours is a reasonable definition, but I also think it can come down to the intention of the film and what people are paying to see. (Note: as someone who is not a fan of that subgenre, I am mostly speculating about what actual fans are looking for.) In that respect, I don't think the existence of a torturer is necessarily important. Consider Saw, which is generally considered in the same class as films like Hostel. Those films arguably don't have a torturer at all - Jigsaw sets up the scenes, sure, but he doesn't directly torture the. Jigsaw (IIRC) isn't even present for many of the deaths, and the appeal of the movie is, presumably, watching these people forced to basically torture themselves. Generally, I don't think people are coming to see the torturer, they just want the torture. As long as a guy is screaming in pain for ten minutes while someone surgically removes his nipple, I think they're good.
I'd consider Saw a variation on torture porn, not necessarily the gold standard (kind of like saying such and such is a Western even though there aren't any horses or it's not a period piece).
How and to what extent people enjoy the torture itself is the other side of the equation (is it porn?). I think you can't just enjoy the way a movie manipulates your emotions (in a horror movie, enjoying being scared and disgusted doesn't mean you enjoy the stuff that disgusts and scares you--that level of remove makes it non-pornographic), and that at certain levels of absurdity it doesn't count either (I enjoy the ridiculousness of the FD circuitous deaths, but I'm not rooting against the characters and I'm certainly wincing when they get killed in a gross or painful manner). I think you basically have to be watching the torture film the way you watch certain slashers, ie., rooting for the other side and reveling in the characters' pain as if they were real people that you severely disliked. Hostel is definitely torture porn because it spends a lot of time making its hapless victims annoying douchebags and boring me while I'm waiting for the plot to begin. On the other hand, a film like Martyrs skates into torture porn at points because it shares some story and tonal elements with actual extreme pornography. Compare to a movie like Wolf Creek, which is widely called torture porn even though the movie's perspective is definitely that the torturer is a bad person doing terrible things and the entire reason it's in the movie is to comment on sexism and the male gaze.
So I think just as, in real life, you need an emotional distance in order to torture someone, I think in films you need an emotional distance between you and characters you would ordinarily identify with and root for in order for the torture to be intended as an enjoyable experience. Saw does this, for instance, by giving you very little information or development for most of the characters it kills (even with the main characters, it opens in medias res so that you see the torture before you get to know them), with the result that it is easy to slide into callously enjoying how far the antagonist can take their suffering.
(I just realized I left a dangling asterisk in my previous post. I was gonna say that: *Theoretically you could have a movie with a character suffering by chance (say, a car accident that leaves them dying slowly in pain) and call it torture porn if the filmmakers are the ones doing the torturing--ie., it's a documentary where the filmmakers encouraged the character to do something dangerous or painful, or it's a situation like Raimi's Evil Dead where the actor playing a fictional character is made to take on some of the real suffering of the character in order to make the film.)
I actually found Hostel to be very watchable a couple of years ago, compared to what I was expecting. Considering everyone and their grandmother have been shitting on it for close to a decennium, it worked well as a slasher flick. Certainly full of dumb but a great deal better than what people trying to paint as being on the level of Triumph of the Will or something.
And goddamn I'm tired of the "torture porn" label... It's like we haven't had any splatter films for the last 30 years or something?
Slasher films were different most of the time, though towards the end they also got gratuitous in their violence. Its sad though you can show pretty horrific violence and still get an R rating, but show a couple scenes of penetration and bam straight to XXX. America you fucked up.
Slasher flicks, even those with lots of gore, are not the same as torture porn. Torture porn is specifically "We are going to show this dude get tortured for a while now." Jason might crush your skull in his bare hands or something equally gruesome, but he still doesn't tie you up and gradually cut off bits of you and staple them to your face while you're screaming the whole time.
Slasher flicks are about killing. Torture porn is about suffering. In the former, death is a threat; in the latter, death is an escape.
Slash flicks are Jason, Friday the Thirteenth, Scream - torture porn are the Saw movies.
Slasher flicks are more about whether or not people will die.
Torture porn are more about HOW the people will die.
I view the Final Destination films as bridging the two genres. Because there's no villain, you're just waiting for kids to die and hoping it's elaborate or at least unexpected.
Final Destination has a villain, DEATH. It will murder the fuck out of you for disrupting his plans for people dying.
Of all the grim reapers you could have used for this conversation, why'd you have to drag in Discworld's?
As far as incarnations of death go, he's a pretty good guy. Rarely gets angry, doesn't get vengeful, just a solid bloke who does his job well.
No need to associate him with Final Destination.
He met the kind of Death you get in final destination.
It was a... brief meeting. But conclusive.
A CROWN? I NEVER WORE A CROWN!
You never wanted to rule.
I don't understand the Final Destination films. People escape a tragic accident and then all die? It seems pointless.
It's rube goldberg machines that end in odd, gruesome, or entertaining deaths. I'd dare to say funny at times.
but seriously that entire series is about watching people who are trying not to die get into accidents despite their best efforts.
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
I've seen the first Final Destination film, it was okay in that it achieved what it set out to do and it's sort of funny and gross and has you shouting "no, don't try to trim your nosehair with nail scissors, that can only end badly"
I saw an edit of the second or third that was basically just the deaths, as I was told that otherwise it's tedious. I basically watched it through my fingers though.
I suppose it's the age old problem of unplanned sequels. You either end up expanding the mythology somewhere that you never planned (e.g. the matrix films) or you just keep remaking the same film (like Final Destination)
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
I don't think the final destination films are horror films at all. Everyone is going to die. There is no monster. It's just a matter of what wacky way will they die.
I kind of see them as a disaster film with a predetermined conclusion. No one survives.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
On a completely different note, I can't for the life of me remember enough about a particular movie in order to find it, but I'd like to watch it as research for a current project. Can anyone help me?
I know it's an independent film about teenagers that takes place over either a summer or an afternoon, with the feel of a hang-out drama. I remember reading an Ebert review of the film, so it was released before he died, probably at least several years before. I think it came out around the time that Quinceanera movie did, putting it probably between 2005 and 2007. I'm pretty sure it was American and in English. It's not well-known and probably got a short, limited theatrical release, probably in the fall.
I know that's ridiculously vague but I never actually saw the film, just heard about it, and now I can't remember the title. No name actors either. Not a big director, even for the indie scene. Anyway, if anyone knows what the hell I'm talking about, please PM or batsignal me or whatever.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
It was a prequel in disguise. You think the main character avoided death and nope, the end it's him being in the plane from the first one.
My only real memory of Final Destination is showing the roller coaster one (3 I think?) to a friend while we waited in line to get onto his first rollecoaster ride ever.
On a completely different note, I can't for the life of me remember enough about a particular movie in order to find it, but I'd like to watch it as research for a current project. Can anyone help me?
I know it's an independent film about teenagers that takes place over either a summer or an afternoon, with the feel of a hang-out drama. I remember reading an Ebert review of the film, so it was released before he died, probably at least several years before. I think it came out around the time that Quinceanera movie did, putting it probably between 2005 and 2007. I'm pretty sure it was American and in English. It's not well-known and probably got a short, limited theatrical release, probably in the fall.
I know that's ridiculously vague but I never actually saw the film, just heard about it, and now I can't remember the title. No name actors either. Not a big director, even for the indie scene. Anyway, if anyone knows what the hell I'm talking about, please PM or batsignal me or whatever.
Do you remember anything about the Ebert review?
Number of stars, particular turns of phrase, whether or not he liked it? His archive is ridiculously searchable.
On a completely different note, I can't for the life of me remember enough about a particular movie in order to find it, but I'd like to watch it as research for a current project. Can anyone help me?
I know it's an independent film about teenagers that takes place over either a summer or an afternoon, with the feel of a hang-out drama. I remember reading an Ebert review of the film, so it was released before he died, probably at least several years before. I think it came out around the time that Quinceanera movie did, putting it probably between 2005 and 2007. I'm pretty sure it was American and in English. It's not well-known and probably got a short, limited theatrical release, probably in the fall.
I know that's ridiculously vague but I never actually saw the film, just heard about it, and now I can't remember the title. No name actors either. Not a big director, even for the indie scene. Anyway, if anyone knows what the hell I'm talking about, please PM or batsignal me or whatever.
Do you remember anything about the Ebert review?
Number of stars, particular turns of phrase, whether or not he liked it? His archive is ridiculously searchable.
I know he liked it, and probably gave it 3 or 3 1/2 stars. But is it that searchable? There used to be a very robust search engine on there but I can't find it now.
On a completely different note, I can't for the life of me remember enough about a particular movie in order to find it, but I'd like to watch it as research for a current project. Can anyone help me?
I know it's an independent film about teenagers that takes place over either a summer or an afternoon, with the feel of a hang-out drama. I remember reading an Ebert review of the film, so it was released before he died, probably at least several years before. I think it came out around the time that Quinceanera movie did, putting it probably between 2005 and 2007. I'm pretty sure it was American and in English. It's not well-known and probably got a short, limited theatrical release, probably in the fall.
I know that's ridiculously vague but I never actually saw the film, just heard about it, and now I can't remember the title. No name actors either. Not a big director, even for the indie scene. Anyway, if anyone knows what the hell I'm talking about, please PM or batsignal me or whatever.
Do you remember anything about the Ebert review?
Number of stars, particular turns of phrase, whether or not he liked it? His archive is ridiculously searchable.
I know he liked it, and probably gave it 3 or 3 1/2 stars. But is it that searchable? There used to be a very robust search engine on there but I can't find it now.
"Myth of the American Sleepover" A lovely, gentle and very true film set on a long night in a small Michigan city at the end of summer. We meet teenagers, boys and girls, on a night when there are two sleepovers, a party and and a gathering at a lakeside, and restless romantics circulate through the night, seeking love. The "myth" that is deconstructed is that all these kids are much into sex, booze and drugs. There are very few drugs, not very much beer, a bottle of vodka that gets passed around, and sex that doesn't go much further than sweet kissing. Poetic. Directed by David Mitchell. 8:15 p.m. Oct. 8, 3:30 p.m. Oct. 9. (Ebert)
How and to what extent people enjoy the torture itself is the other side of the equation (is it porn?). I think you can't just enjoy the way a movie manipulates your emotions (in a horror movie, enjoying being scared and disgusted doesn't mean you enjoy the stuff that disgusts and scares you--that level of remove makes it non-pornographic), and that at certain levels of absurdity it doesn't count either (I enjoy the ridiculousness of the FD circuitous deaths, but I'm not rooting against the characters and I'm certainly wincing when they get killed in a gross or painful manner). I think you basically have to be watching the torture film the way you watch certain slashers, ie., rooting for the other side and reveling in the characters' pain as if they were real people that you severely disliked. Hostel is definitely torture porn because it spends a lot of time making its hapless victims annoying douchebags and boring me while I'm waiting for the plot to begin. On the other hand, a film like Martyrs skates into torture porn at points because it shares some story and tonal elements with actual extreme pornography. Compare to a movie like Wolf Creek, which is widely called torture porn even though the movie's perspective is definitely that the torturer is a bad person doing terrible things and the entire reason it's in the movie is to comment on sexism and the male gaze.
So I think just as, in real life, you need an emotional distance in order to torture someone, I think in films you need an emotional distance between you and characters you would ordinarily identify with and root for in order for the torture to be intended as an enjoyable experience. Saw does this, for instance, by giving you very little information or development for most of the characters it kills (even with the main characters, it opens in medias res so that you see the torture before you get to know them), with the result that it is easy to slide into callously enjoying how far the antagonist can take their suffering.
(I just realized I left a dangling asterisk in my previous post. I was gonna say that: *Theoretically you could have a movie with a character suffering by chance (say, a car accident that leaves them dying slowly in pain) and call it torture porn if the filmmakers are the ones doing the torturing--ie., it's a documentary where the filmmakers encouraged the character to do something dangerous or painful, or it's a situation like Raimi's Evil Dead where the actor playing a fictional character is made to take on some of the real suffering of the character in order to make the film.)
I think this runs up against what is meant by "porn," and I suspect definitions vary. I use the term colloquially to refer to something where the thing being offered up is being appreciated more or less in a vacuum. Traditional sex porn, for example, is appreciated based strictly on it being sex. You're not meant to appreciate it more because of emotional context provided by other parts of the film, it's just sex. You watch people fucking and you enjoy it because it's people fucking. Michael Bay makes what might be termed explosion porn - shit blows up, and you enjoy it because it's shit blowing up.
Torture porn, then, is a film in which the torture is pretty much the only thing the audience is meant to care about. The plot is delivered as a means of getting the audience to the part where some dude gets tortured. Who he is or why he's being tortured is effectively irrelevant, because the movie is just intended as a shallow vehicle to present the torture itself. That doesn't necessarily mean that the torture has to comprise the entirety of the film, or even the bulk of it, just as sex porn doesn't necessarily consist primarily of sex. It's just that nobody cares about the non-sex stuff that's happening, and they mostly want to hurry up and get to the goods.
So there you go. "Porn" in the context I use it refers to a film that is concerned entirely with giving you a shallow and visceral experience, with things like character, story, or genuine emotional response present as an afterthought. I accept that different people will have different definitions, but that's how I use the term.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
"Myth of the American Sleepover" A lovely, gentle and very true film set on a long night in a small Michigan city at the end of summer. We meet teenagers, boys and girls, on a night when there are two sleepovers, a party and and a gathering at a lakeside, and restless romantics circulate through the night, seeking love. The "myth" that is deconstructed is that all these kids are much into sex, booze and drugs. There are very few drugs, not very much beer, a bottle of vodka that gets passed around, and sex that doesn't go much further than sweet kissing. Poetic. Directed by David Mitchell. 8:15 p.m. Oct. 8, 3:30 p.m. Oct. 9. (Ebert)
Thrill as action star Bruce Willis, playing a grizzled veteran cop on the verge of retirement, reluctantly shoots a bank robber, then spends the next two weeks filling out paperwork and attending counseling sessions to see if he's handling things okay...
...to the death.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Thrill as action star Bruce Willis, playing a grizzled veteran cop on the verge of retirement, reluctantly shoots a bank robber, then spends the next two weeks filling out paperwork and attending counseling sessions to see if he's handling things okay...
...to the death.
This was a huge miss of almost human when they only showed like 1-2 of the main characters rageaholic meetings. He was just the biggest dick to the rest of the people there, it was so great.
Those sessions were great, though that was just on Karl Urban being hilarious when he's in full McCoy callous dick mode. I'd watch an entire movie where he was going full sperg on people.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I think a better term for "torture porn" would be "torture titillation". It's not the sexual connotation that is relevant, but the fact that things are presented in the most excitement and thrill-inducing way possible. With torture that does include a certain amount of revulsion at what is shown.
I don't think Bay's "explosion porn" has any sexual context, either.
"Torture titillation" is nicely alliterative, though.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
The word porn there is not being used about sex. It's being used as "material primarily focused on the adjective directly preceding this word." Like was mentioned earlier, a Bay movie might be called explosion porn. It's not about it being sexual. "Torture porn" can easily identify say an average Eli Roth movie and people know what you mean when you say it.
I don't think Bay's "explosion porn" has any sexual context, either.
"Torture titillation" is nicely alliterative, though.
I thought you were as well. I just wanted to point out that the connotation of porn and sex is still there. Even if we generally know what is "actually meant".
(And I'd argue that at the very least Bay has fetishized explosions to such an extent, that a sexual subtext isn't really that far-fetched.)
The word porn there is not being used about sex. It's being used as "material primarily focused on the adjective directly preceding this word." Like was mentioned earlier, a Bay movie might be called explosion porn. It's not about it being sexual. "Torture porn" can easily identify say an average Eli Roth movie and people know what you mean when you say it.
The problem is that when people say "explosion porn" they don't usually do so with the same sense of contempt with which they say "torture porn". I've always felt that latter is meant to imply a seedy or perverse quality, not just "has a lot of torture in it".
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
"Myth of the American Sleepover" A lovely, gentle and very true film set on a long night in a small Michigan city at the end of summer. We meet teenagers, boys and girls, on a night when there are two sleepovers, a party and and a gathering at a lakeside, and restless romantics circulate through the night, seeking love. The "myth" that is deconstructed is that all these kids are much into sex, booze and drugs. There are very few drugs, not very much beer, a bottle of vodka that gets passed around, and sex that doesn't go much further than sweet kissing. Poetic. Directed by David Mitchell. 8:15 p.m. Oct. 8, 3:30 p.m. Oct. 9. (Ebert)
I think torture porn movies are pretty inherently seedy and perverse because that's the kind of movie they're making. It's not just about the torture either. You wouldn't call a political thriller that showed a guy get tortured for information a torture porn movie. Torture porn movies are like Hostel 3 or whatever, where the entire selling point is "SEE IF YOU CAN KEEP FROM LOOKING AWAY AS WE SHOW YOU FAKE TOENAILS AND FORESKINS GETTING PULLED OFF WITH A PAIR OF NEEDLE NOSE PLIERS!" or whatever.
I don't have contempt for those kind of movies, to me it's just another kind of genre of "horror" movies. I'm not into them, but I get that some people are.
For me I got to the movies to get a vicarious thrill from the experience. I'm not a space captain, but watching Christopher Pratt play one is awesome. Same with splosion movies about the thrill of splosions.
I have no desire to see people tortured and so that whole genre is just depraved and the fans of the films kind of off in my opinion.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I think torture porn movies are pretty inherently seedy and perverse because that's the kind of movie they're making. It's not just about the torture either. You wouldn't call a political thriller that showed a guy get tortured for information a torture porn movie. Torture porn movies are like Hostel 3 or whatever, where the entire selling point is "SEE IF YOU CAN KEEP FROM LOOKING AWAY AS WE SHOW YOU FAKE TOENAILS AND FORESKINS GETTING PULLED OFF WITH A PAIR OF NEEDLE NOSE PLIERS!" or whatever.
I don't have contempt for those kind of movies, to me it's just another kind of genre of "horror" movies. I'm not into them, but I get that some people are.
24 gets tagged with torture a lot, but Bauer killed more dudes with his legs than he ever tortured and no one thinks of that series as some kind of leg murder porn!
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I try not to judge film audiences too much. Transformers was terrible, but I don't think poorly of people who liked it. I might wish people didn't like certain films, because ultimately it ends up influencing what films get made in the future, but they're not bad people.
Torture porn is a genre I really dislike, and I can't really understand the mindset of someone who enjoys it, even if I can probably come up with some academic explanations for its popularity. But then, some people probably can't understand some of my preferences, so whatevs.
And while I might dislike a stupid blockbuster film because it pulls resources from other movies I would like, it's not like torture porn is such a significant force that it's going to have any effect on anything. It's not like a Wonder Woman movie will never come to be because somebody made a Hostel 17.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
24 gets tagged with torture a lot, but Bauer killed more dudes with his legs than he ever tortured and no one thinks of that series as some kind of leg murder porn!
Wait, there's a Giver movie out now? How does the reveal even work? Or do they even put a twist like that in?
Due to me being placed in the 'accelerated' reading courses in elementary school, I skipped over the class book study of that book. Got to read it on my own time many years later, and as a person who visualizes every thing in a book (and even provides mental voices for each character), that twist was a real nice one.
When I heard about the giver for some reason I got it confused with the gift of the magi the dumbest christmas story of all time. BITCH CAN REGROW HER HAIR HE CAN'T REGROW HIS WATCH!
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
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I'd consider Saw a variation on torture porn, not necessarily the gold standard (kind of like saying such and such is a Western even though there aren't any horses or it's not a period piece).
How and to what extent people enjoy the torture itself is the other side of the equation (is it porn?). I think you can't just enjoy the way a movie manipulates your emotions (in a horror movie, enjoying being scared and disgusted doesn't mean you enjoy the stuff that disgusts and scares you--that level of remove makes it non-pornographic), and that at certain levels of absurdity it doesn't count either (I enjoy the ridiculousness of the FD circuitous deaths, but I'm not rooting against the characters and I'm certainly wincing when they get killed in a gross or painful manner). I think you basically have to be watching the torture film the way you watch certain slashers, ie., rooting for the other side and reveling in the characters' pain as if they were real people that you severely disliked. Hostel is definitely torture porn because it spends a lot of time making its hapless victims annoying douchebags and boring me while I'm waiting for the plot to begin. On the other hand, a film like Martyrs skates into torture porn at points because it shares some story and tonal elements with actual extreme pornography. Compare to a movie like Wolf Creek, which is widely called torture porn even though the movie's perspective is definitely that the torturer is a bad person doing terrible things and the entire reason it's in the movie is to comment on sexism and the male gaze.
So I think just as, in real life, you need an emotional distance in order to torture someone, I think in films you need an emotional distance between you and characters you would ordinarily identify with and root for in order for the torture to be intended as an enjoyable experience. Saw does this, for instance, by giving you very little information or development for most of the characters it kills (even with the main characters, it opens in medias res so that you see the torture before you get to know them), with the result that it is easy to slide into callously enjoying how far the antagonist can take their suffering.
(I just realized I left a dangling asterisk in my previous post. I was gonna say that: *Theoretically you could have a movie with a character suffering by chance (say, a car accident that leaves them dying slowly in pain) and call it torture porn if the filmmakers are the ones doing the torturing--ie., it's a documentary where the filmmakers encouraged the character to do something dangerous or painful, or it's a situation like Raimi's Evil Dead where the actor playing a fictional character is made to take on some of the real suffering of the character in order to make the film.)
You never wanted to rule.
It's rube goldberg machines that end in odd, gruesome, or entertaining deaths. I'd dare to say funny at times.
but seriously that entire series is about watching people who are trying not to die get into accidents despite their best efforts.
I saw an edit of the second or third that was basically just the deaths, as I was told that otherwise it's tedious. I basically watched it through my fingers though.
I suppose it's the age old problem of unplanned sequels. You either end up expanding the mythology somewhere that you never planned (e.g. the matrix films) or you just keep remaking the same film (like Final Destination)
I kind of see them as a disaster film with a predetermined conclusion. No one survives.
I know it's an independent film about teenagers that takes place over either a summer or an afternoon, with the feel of a hang-out drama. I remember reading an Ebert review of the film, so it was released before he died, probably at least several years before. I think it came out around the time that Quinceanera movie did, putting it probably between 2005 and 2007. I'm pretty sure it was American and in English. It's not well-known and probably got a short, limited theatrical release, probably in the fall.
I know that's ridiculously vague but I never actually saw the film, just heard about it, and now I can't remember the title. No name actors either. Not a big director, even for the indie scene. Anyway, if anyone knows what the hell I'm talking about, please PM or batsignal me or whatever.
I am sceptic.
My only real memory of Final Destination is showing the roller coaster one (3 I think?) to a friend while we waited in line to get onto his first rollecoaster ride ever.
they were in the "we want to do a trilogy" during pitching way and absolutely nothing else.
Do you remember anything about the Ebert review?
Number of stars, particular turns of phrase, whether or not he liked it? His archive is ridiculously searchable.
twitch.tv/Taramoor
@TaramoorPlays
Taramoor on Youtube
I know he liked it, and probably gave it 3 or 3 1/2 stars. But is it that searchable? There used to be a very robust search engine on there but I can't find it now.
And was it set in modern times like Self-Medicated or Rocket Science? Or is it plausible that it was the 1960s like December Boys? Maybe something like Kids in America?
I mean, there are a lot of possibilities, but it's not infinite. It's probably not Sisterhood of the Traveling pants or anything.
twitch.tv/Taramoor
@TaramoorPlays
Taramoor on Youtube
After some further searching, it wasn't in any of Ebert's year end lists and didn't play at Ebertfest.
I think this runs up against what is meant by "porn," and I suspect definitions vary. I use the term colloquially to refer to something where the thing being offered up is being appreciated more or less in a vacuum. Traditional sex porn, for example, is appreciated based strictly on it being sex. You're not meant to appreciate it more because of emotional context provided by other parts of the film, it's just sex. You watch people fucking and you enjoy it because it's people fucking. Michael Bay makes what might be termed explosion porn - shit blows up, and you enjoy it because it's shit blowing up.
Torture porn, then, is a film in which the torture is pretty much the only thing the audience is meant to care about. The plot is delivered as a means of getting the audience to the part where some dude gets tortured. Who he is or why he's being tortured is effectively irrelevant, because the movie is just intended as a shallow vehicle to present the torture itself. That doesn't necessarily mean that the torture has to comprise the entirety of the film, or even the bulk of it, just as sex porn doesn't necessarily consist primarily of sex. It's just that nobody cares about the non-sex stuff that's happening, and they mostly want to hurry up and get to the goods.
So there you go. "Porn" in the context I use it refers to a film that is concerned entirely with giving you a shallow and visceral experience, with things like character, story, or genuine emotional response present as an afterthought. I accept that different people will have different definitions, but that's how I use the term.
Sounds like a boring movie.
The Myth of the American Supercop
Thrill as action star Bruce Willis, playing a grizzled veteran cop on the verge of retirement, reluctantly shoots a bank robber, then spends the next two weeks filling out paperwork and attending counseling sessions to see if he's handling things okay...
...to the death.
This was a huge miss of almost human when they only showed like 1-2 of the main characters rageaholic meetings. He was just the biggest dick to the rest of the people there, it was so great.
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5/5, would watch again
I don't think Bay's "explosion porn" has any sexual context, either.
"Torture titillation" is nicely alliterative, though.
Someone stop this man before he films another movie. STAHP!!!!
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I thought you were as well. I just wanted to point out that the connotation of porn and sex is still there. Even if we generally know what is "actually meant".
(And I'd argue that at the very least Bay has fetishized explosions to such an extent, that a sexual subtext isn't really that far-fetched.)
The problem is that when people say "explosion porn" they don't usually do so with the same sense of contempt with which they say "torture porn". I've always felt that latter is meant to imply a seedy or perverse quality, not just "has a lot of torture in it".
No, but that sounds like a neat movie.
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I don't have contempt for those kind of movies, to me it's just another kind of genre of "horror" movies. I'm not into them, but I get that some people are.
I have no desire to see people tortured and so that whole genre is just depraved and the fans of the films kind of off in my opinion.
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24 did it's best to make that happen.
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Torture porn is a genre I really dislike, and I can't really understand the mindset of someone who enjoys it, even if I can probably come up with some academic explanations for its popularity. But then, some people probably can't understand some of my preferences, so whatevs.
And while I might dislike a stupid blockbuster film because it pulls resources from other movies I would like, it's not like torture porn is such a significant force that it's going to have any effect on anything. It's not like a Wonder Woman movie will never come to be because somebody made a Hostel 17.
No one remembers the leg murder, though.
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Wait, there's a Giver movie out now? How does the reveal even work? Or do they even put a twist like that in?
WoW
Dear Satan.....
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