Hostel appeared on Netflix so I decided to give it a watch. 26 minutes in and nothing has happened yet, just the three dumb main characters chasing for pussy. What a boring fucking movie. Where's all the horrible controversial violence?
The first half is a pretty good teen comedy. Then it just becomes disgusting torture porn for the remainder.
So you've got about another twenty minutes before it goes downhill.
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited August 2014
The Hostel, one hour in. Violence has started. Still quite boring.
In the movie's favor, it does have a lot of nice cinematography of interesting looking locations. Also, in the movie's favor, spoilers now because it's an hour in:
There's a nice wordless side-story about the torturer who gets his hands on the third and final protagonist: he's a first time torturer, visible nervous about his task at hand. But hey, he's paid for the privilege to murder this guy so he's gonna go through with it.
edit: And finally done with the movie. It did have two good scenes towards the end.
After the final boy gets away from the first time torturer, he dons a disguise and ends up having a discussion with another patron who's pumped and ready to go in for his own kill. It's a fantastic little scene which, much like the first time torturer, comes out of nowhere and within the parameters of the genre are quite refreshing additions.
The other good scene is after the final boy has escaped the compound but is still chased by goons. He uses a big bag of bubblegum to hire a gang of children (ages 6-8 or so) to violently murder his chasers, two goons that are right behind them. Watching these little devils throwing rocks and caving skulls in with metal pipes is hilariously dark.
Overall, Hostel is crap, but it does have some good stuff going for it.
reVerse on
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Johnny ChopsockyScootaloo! We have to cook!Grillin' HaysenburgersRegistered Userregular
Finally watched The Raid 2. Nowhere near as good as the first, it was just a collection of pretty good action scenes framed by a shitty video game plot with equally uninteresting writing.
This is how I felt about the first one.
I found the plot of the second one actually needed dumbing down. It was trying too much to be the Infernal Affairs/The Departed level of crime drama mixed in with all the OTT action set pieces and really you can't have both with something suffering. In particular you had at one point something like 9 plot points all running at once with more and more new characters being introduced at random.
I keep thinking if the plot was kept more streamlined to something like Enter The Dragon it would work so much better as I found the action set pieces were slicker, better shot, far more brutal and more entertaining.
The plot was incredibly dumb and all the side plots were just added for more fight scenes.
For example there's no reason at all why they didn't just shoot Koso. Hell, there's no reason why they didn't just use guns in almost every instance of an extended fight sequence. In the first movie the logic behind the fights held up, here it didn't at all. That was one of my biggest problems with it and why I just got kind of bored - it has no reason to exist other than to show off it's budget and fight choreography.
It's exceedingly illegal to own a firearm in Indonesia without a permit. 20 to life and up to death penalty illegal. The only guys with guns are the ones who can get the police to just ignore the ones they have, and that's Bangun's crew because the police commissioner has their back. So a bunch of random thugs aren't going to be packing because they either a) can't afford it or b) don't want the risk of getting caught with one.
Also I profoundly disagree with you on all your other points.
TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
Watched Defending Your Life for the first time in a long long time, really underrated movie. Never a real bwa-ha-ha film but just a good visualization of what the afterlife might be. And it was Albert Brooks when he wasn't yet phoning it in, and completely forgot Meryl Streep was in it. I wary of remakes in general, especially with a much more cynical, smarmy tone that might come from this being made 25 years later, but this could actually work if given a gentle care to it to make Judgment City look more utopian.
Expendables opened soft, as did just about everything this weekend including The giver. Turtles and Guardians still went 1, 2. Guardians looks to surpass Cap 2 for BO.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Ju-on was creepy. Learned Shimizu directed both japanese movies and the first two american grudge films. Grudge 2 had pieces that were in ju-on that didn't make it into Grudge. Curious how similar ju-on 2 is to his american version without that storyline.
ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
The first half of Hostel gives you your gratuitous titties, the last half gives you your gratuitous torture. Neither are very compelling.
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.
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?
Got around to having netflix send us the blu-ray for The Lego Movie. My 14 month old didn't get into it, though she's really picky about what kinds of movies/shows she'll lock into.(Mostly just Frozen, Tangled, and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, hah). Wife and I both really enjoyed it.
Honestly with knowing how high the RT score is and how universally loved I've seen it, my expectations were probably too high, and it didn't meet those expectations, but it was definitely really good. Just a fun romp throughout.
Hanging out with my parents this weekend and we watched Transcendence ... I'm not sure why, but we did. It was actually better than I expected, but uh... I set that bar pretty low. I'mma need to pick some nits just to get it out of my system:
First, the dramatic 'escape' scene where she just barely gets him hooked up to the internet in time? Fuck that. He could be on a Google Fiber connection and still would've needed actual time to disperse that much code. But apparently it took those state of the art processors a good minute to install the software for a satellite modem? ugggh.
I had to laugh at the 'hacker' who got caught in the cafe and busted his laptop by simply breaking the screen off. Because now they totally can't get to the hard drive. You've got nothing, coppers!
I don't care how smart your nanobots are, they aren't working that fast and they're not gonna cause a dude to stand up like he's Dracula rising from his coffin.
I have no idea why things suddenly changed at the climax. I guess I'm supposed to believe that it really was Caster inside the AI the whole time and when he realized how badly his wife wanted him shut down he gave up? I don't believe that at all, so instead I choose to believe that the AI secretly loved Paul Bettany's character (daddy!) and gave up all of its leverage when he was threatened. Because that may have had a piece of Caster, but that was Skynet.
And why did that even happen with Max/Bettany being threatened!? If this RIFT terrorist is so worried about a soulless AI taking over the world, what purpose is there to threatening the life of one human being? Let alone someone on your side! What the fuck!?
Anyway, I did actually like the general direction of the story when they started (trying to save Will, instead of the 'power hungry scientist' I saw in the trailers) and some of the exploration of the idea was interesting. Enjoyed Hall and nobody jumped out as 'bad' and I was surprised at the number of big(ish) names showing up.
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.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Hanging out with my parents this weekend and we watched Transcendence ... I'm not sure why, but we did. It was actually better than I expected, but uh... I set that bar pretty low. I'mma need to pick some nits just to get it out of my system:
First, the dramatic 'escape' scene where she just barely gets him hooked up to the internet in time? Fuck that. He could be on a Google Fiber connection and still would've needed actual time to disperse that much code. But apparently it took those state of the art processors a good minute to install the software for a satellite modem? ugggh.
I had to laugh at the 'hacker' who got caught in the cafe and busted his laptop by simply breaking the screen off. Because now they totally can't get to the hard drive. You've got nothing, coppers!
I don't care how smart your nanobots are, they aren't working that fast and they're not gonna cause a dude to stand up like he's Dracula rising from his coffin.
I have no idea why things suddenly changed at the climax. I guess I'm supposed to believe that it really was Caster inside the AI the whole time and when he realized how badly his wife wanted him shut down he gave up? I don't believe that at all, so instead I choose to believe that the AI secretly loved Paul Bettany's character (daddy!) and gave up all of its leverage when he was threatened. Because that may have had a piece of Caster, but that was Skynet.
And why did that even happen with Max/Bettany being threatened!? If this RIFT terrorist is so worried about a soulless AI taking over the world, what purpose is there to threatening the life of one human being? Let alone someone on your side! What the fuck!?
Anyway, I did actually like the general direction of the story when they started (trying to save Will, instead of the 'power hungry scientist' I saw in the trailers) and some of the exploration of the idea was interesting. Enjoyed Hall and nobody jumped out as 'bad' and I was surprised at the number of big(ish) names showing up.
So in conclusion, meh.
Yeah, the movie couldn't decide on where to stand on anything. Meh fits it well.
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
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.
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.
ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
Oh, hey, did I mention I saw Sinister? I saw Sinister!
It was very good. Much the same creepy vibe as the Ring et al, complete with terrifying children being terrifying. The protagonist did predictably stupid things, but he wasn't so egregiously stupid that it impacted the movie much. Everything was moody, jump scares were not too heavily used, and they succeeded at keeping the Bad Guy cloaked in enough mystery that even near the end, it remained creepy. (Versus most horror films that stop being scary at about the one hour mark, because as soon as they give the reveal, all of the unknown-ness - and thus scariness - is gone.)
It was a little predictable, in that my wife and I guessed that the missing children were the ones killing everyone about thirty minutes in, and so the ending wasn't too much a shock, but it was still well-done and still all very oogy. The nature of the demon and him dragging all the children off into picture-world was cool and eerie, and the daughter's acting during the final scene was perfect. And everything was wrapped up nicely in terms of foreshadowing, regarding the girl's artistic streak and the drawings of dead families.
The actual demon looked a little too goth/The Crow-y, but it didn't ruin anything for me.
My favorite bit was the way the crate full of movies kept reappearing in the attic. I haven't been so scared of a box since I dated that girl with vagina dentata.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Though in the Final Destination films, the "how" is generally about the silly Rube Goldbergian way that leads up to the (usually quick) death, rather than focusing on protracted suffering like Torture Porn (for the most part, I think there was some tanning bed death scene in one of the FD that was protracted in that sense).
Though in the Final Destination films, the "how" is generally about the silly Rube Goldbergian way that leads up to the (usually quick) death, rather than focusing on protracted suffering like Torture Porn (for the most part, I think there was some tanning bed death scene in one of the FD that was protracted in that sense).
I will admit to not watching all of the FD films. I think I've seen the first and second and selected scenes from some of the others. I remember the teacher dying in a house fire or something being particularly prolonged and agonizing.
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 would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
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 liked the third one. It had Mary Elizabeth Winstead, so I'm biased.
My memory is a bit fuzzy (they're not exactly films I return to), so I'm probably not remembering some things. The tanning bed ones were the ones that stood out as being excessively "let's focus on them suffering".
Edit: Yeah, the third one had the "get to look at Mary Elizabeth Winstead for 90 minutes" thing going for it.
Captain Tragedy on
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Maybe in the early ones it's a matter of coincidence, but Death is straight up poltergeisting things into place in the later movies.
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.
Pushes the disagree button. Death in that franchise is vengeful, creative asshole.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
No, stuff definitely moves in the first film too. But that doesn't mean this is an intelligence and not a force.
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
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.
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chiasaur11Never doubt a raccoon.Do you think it's trademarked?Registered Userregular
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.
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.
the FD movies definitely follow a slasher template is style and tone. Fact that the killer is happenstance of an absurd level doesn't change that
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
Saw occulus last night.
It's not bad.
I like how the main character had a plan and lots of fail safe. Even if she did miss a trick by looking at the world through anything but a screen.
Zombie mum didn't seem to fit all that well with the other stuff. I suppose the idea was that she'd been driven insane by the illusions.
There was lots of good bait and switch, like eating the lightbulb. The story too went from "girl is crazy" to "boy is evil" and kept you guessing about what was going to turn out to be a central element which had been an illusion all along. But it didn't do that.
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The first half is a pretty good teen comedy. Then it just becomes disgusting torture porn for the remainder.
So you've got about another twenty minutes before it goes downhill.
In the movie's favor, it does have a lot of nice cinematography of interesting looking locations. Also, in the movie's favor, spoilers now because it's an hour in:
edit: And finally done with the movie. It did have two good scenes towards the end.
The other good scene is after the final boy has escaped the compound but is still chased by goons. He uses a big bag of bubblegum to hire a gang of children (ages 6-8 or so) to violently murder his chasers, two goons that are right behind them. Watching these little devils throwing rocks and caving skulls in with metal pipes is hilariously dark.
Overall, Hostel is crap, but it does have some good stuff going for it.
Also I profoundly disagree with you on all your other points.
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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?
Honestly with knowing how high the RT score is and how universally loved I've seen it, my expectations were probably too high, and it didn't meet those expectations, but it was definitely really good. Just a fun romp throughout.
I had to laugh at the 'hacker' who got caught in the cafe and busted his laptop by simply breaking the screen off. Because now they totally can't get to the hard drive. You've got nothing, coppers!
I don't care how smart your nanobots are, they aren't working that fast and they're not gonna cause a dude to stand up like he's Dracula rising from his coffin.
I have no idea why things suddenly changed at the climax. I guess I'm supposed to believe that it really was Caster inside the AI the whole time and when he realized how badly his wife wanted him shut down he gave up? I don't believe that at all, so instead I choose to believe that the AI secretly loved Paul Bettany's character (daddy!) and gave up all of its leverage when he was threatened. Because that may have had a piece of Caster, but that was Skynet.
And why did that even happen with Max/Bettany being threatened!? If this RIFT terrorist is so worried about a soulless AI taking over the world, what purpose is there to threatening the life of one human being? Let alone someone on your side! What the fuck!?
Anyway, I did actually like the general direction of the story when they started (trying to save Will, instead of the 'power hungry scientist' I saw in the trailers) and some of the exploration of the idea was interesting. Enjoyed Hall and nobody jumped out as 'bad' and I was surprised at the number of big(ish) names showing up.
So in conclusion, meh.
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.
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Yeah, the movie couldn't decide on where to stand on anything. Meh fits it well.
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.
One of the best slow burn movies ever made.
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It was very good. Much the same creepy vibe as the Ring et al, complete with terrifying children being terrifying. The protagonist did predictably stupid things, but he wasn't so egregiously stupid that it impacted the movie much. Everything was moody, jump scares were not too heavily used, and they succeeded at keeping the Bad Guy cloaked in enough mystery that even near the end, it remained creepy. (Versus most horror films that stop being scary at about the one hour mark, because as soon as they give the reveal, all of the unknown-ness - and thus scariness - is gone.)
The actual demon looked a little too goth/The Crow-y, but it didn't ruin anything for me.
My favorite bit was the way the crate full of movies kept reappearing in the attic. I haven't been so scared of a box since I dated that girl with vagina dentata.
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.
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Final Destination has a villain, DEATH. It will murder the fuck out of you for disrupting his plans for people dying.
I will admit to not watching all of the FD films. I think I've seen the first and second and selected scenes from some of the others. I remember the teacher dying in a house fire or something being particularly prolonged and agonizing.
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I liked the third one. It had Mary Elizabeth Winstead, so I'm biased.
Edit: Yeah, the third one had the "get to look at Mary Elizabeth Winstead for 90 minutes" thing going for it.
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.
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.
Because it was funny.
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.
Maybe in the early ones it's a matter of coincidence, but Death is straight up poltergeisting things into place in the later movies.
twitch.tv/Taramoor
@TaramoorPlays
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Pushes the disagree button. Death in that franchise is vengeful, creative asshole.
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.
He met the kind of Death you get in final destination.
It was a... brief meeting. But conclusive.
Why I fear the ocean.
the FD movies definitely follow a slasher template is style and tone. Fact that the killer is happenstance of an absurd level doesn't change that
It's not bad.
Zombie mum didn't seem to fit all that well with the other stuff. I suppose the idea was that she'd been driven insane by the illusions.
There was lots of good bait and switch, like eating the lightbulb. The story too went from "girl is crazy" to "boy is evil" and kept you guessing about what was going to turn out to be a central element which had been an illusion all along. But it didn't do that.