Can we stop with the torture porn please?? Seriously, I LOVE horror movies. Scary movies are so much fun and the whole nail biting suspense, love it. But what's with making EVERY scary movie as graphic and bloody as possible? Just because you CAN show what it looks like to have someone disemboweled does not mean it should be shown on the screen. I'm tired of it. It's not scary - it's gross. It doesn't add something to the story, and it just makes me tell Jeff to skip the movie ahead so I don't get ill.
Looking for an example? Jeff and I watched "The Collector" recently and there were ALL SORTS of problems. Basic premise? A burglar breaks into a house to rob a family supposedly gone on vacation. As he's cracking the safe, he realizes that there is someone else in the house. A bondage masked bad man who has tied up the parents and brought them to the basement to torture/kill. Why? We don't really get to hear the "why" other than from a previous victim who says the guy is a "collector and they'll never get out of the house alive". That's our whole background. So it's a faceless, reasonless baddie in the house and the burglar now must save the family.
First problem? Telling me too much about burglar. They try and explain WHY the burglar breaks into the house (wife took out a loan from BAD PEOPLE and they are coming to collect and blah, blah). I think they did this to make the burglar look like the good guy. But let's face it, the burglar could be a cracked out ex-con with a gambling problem and he would look like a SAINT compared to crazy guy torturing the family.
Second problem? In the space of a few hours this bondage mask wearing guy has not only managed to get the parents and drag them to the basement where he does horrible things to them, but he has also managed to do the following:
- install about 15 deadbolts on the doors that only he has the key to
- poor sticky acid all over the floor of a daughter's bedroom
- hang up a web of barely visible wire that will cut your skin
- put down about 55 bear traps on the floor
- stake out his attack dog outside
- put nails in the stairs so when you step on them you cut your foot
- put a nail in the PHONE so when you try and call for help you stab yourself
- Knives in the chandelier
I could go on and on about the crazy stuff this guy does in the space of a few hours, and my thinking is WHY??? He's already got the two adults in the house in the basement CHAINED UP. Who is he setting all these traps out for? The whole point of the movie is he doesn't know the burglar is inside. So what are these elaborate traps for?? Trust me when I say those two people are not going ANYWHERE without help.
Basically the movie goes on and on with people dying in horrible ways, and the teenage daughter comes home with her boyfriend and both of them die in horrible ways. Burglar manages to get the mother unchained but she freaks out after seeing her dead husband and runs smack dab into the killer. It's just nuts. My feeling was, why aren't we KILLING THE BAD GUY??? The guy doesn't know you are there... grab a weapon (there are TONS OF THEM EVERYWHERE) and sneak up behind this guy and take him out. I mean... unchain the dad, wait for killer guy to come downstairs and together you kill the bad guy. I just do NOT understand why we're doing all this skulking around the house unless it's to show us just how terrible bad guy is with all the traps he's laid out.
And here's my biggest pet peeve, and if you think you're going to watch this movie, stop here. Burglar makes it out of the house with the 5 year old daughter who has been hiding. The police are coming and he gets HIT BY A COP CAR in an attempt to save the daughter. She's taken away safely in a cop car and burglar is in the ambulance. He thinks he's safe. He's okay. NOT SO FAST! The ambulance is hit by a cop car manned by BONDAGE MASK WEARING BAD GUY who takes out everyone in the ambulance, gets the burglar guy and carries him off to certain doom.
Really? REALLY?? The bad guy escapes the house which was on FIRE by the way, takes out a cop, gets into the car and chases down the ambulance?? Is he SUPER BONDAGE MASK WEARING BAD GUY??? Does he have special powers?? I hate that. Don't try and make me think that this is a HUMAN and MORTAL person and ohhh... this could happen to you scary movie, and then give the bad guy immortal powers of regeneration. It cheapens the movie and the ending. Hated this. Hated this, hated this, hated this.
So are we clear Hollywood Directors? No blood and guts and torture JUST BECAUSE you can. And no supernatural bad guys who seems to re-spawn like a video game character. Let's go back to scary movies where something is left to the imagination. It's scarier and works better as a story.
Thank you again for your time and attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Disgruntled movie watcher
2 comments:
Pretty much...right on. The ONLY thing this movie had going for it was the actual idea, which is finally an original and not a remake of Halloween, Friday the 13th, or a Nightmare on Elm Street.
I have a different gripe with scary movies. (Much of the idiocy of scary movies has been satirized in the "Scary Movie" series and the series won't end because the idiocy in the scary movies is so prevalent.)
I can't stand movies with 100% white casts AND no Black, Latino or Asian people even among the crowds. Now, I don't buy any DVD unless it has a Black or Latino or Asian person on the cover. That person who isn't white sends an important message to the viewing public: 'This movie is not a Jim Crow American apartheid movie where anyone who isn't white need not apply.'
Actually, among the worst offenders are whites' romantic comedies (count the Black people and Latinos and Asians, even in crowd shots that are supposedly from New York City).
A speaking role is virtually out of the question for non-whites. Most romantic comedies are all-white. That's not romantic or comic; it's simply infuriating.
Of course there are some exceptions, but I submit to you that even ONE ALL WHITE CAST film per year from Hollywood is one all-white film too many, just as one "whites only" hotel in the American South would be one too many.
To me, every movie with an all-white cast is a horror movie.
We've pretty clearly banned from movies all scenes of people making love in the nude, while there is no limit to the number of hand held laser guided missiles that can blow unlimited numbers of people to hell. Love-making is bad. Killing hundreds is good (or at least not bad) in Hollywood.
I saw a great Asian film that was shown at the Cannes Film Festival. It was about a post-adolescent who invites prostitutes to his house and then kills them.
The protagonist of the movie is a police detective turned pimp who suddenly realized his prostitutes are disappearing without a trace.
An Asian police official turned pimp as the protagonist in a horror movie? Actually, it's a thriller with utterly unpredictable plot twists.
IMDB (Internet Movie Database)says it's by NA Hong Jin, and called "Chugyeogja" in Korean:
"Joong-ho is a dirty detective turned pimp in financial trouble as several of his girls have recently disappeared without clearing their debts. While trying to track them down, he finds a clue that the vanished girls were all called up by a same client whom one of his girls is meeting with right now. Written by sonic_bang."
I only bought the DVD because there was some ambiguity as to whether the man on the cover had looked Black or Asian. Either way, he helped the film to meet my first criteria: the movie's not going to have an all-white cast.
I turned out to be a real thriller with none of the predictability that makes Hollywood movies so predictable, with their soto voz piano and violins at the end to signal that you are about to see your 135th consecutive happy ending with happy ending music.
Here's a message to Hollywood producers: If you can't find even one Black, Asian or Latino for a major part in your otherwise all-white movie then I can't find one dime in my pocket to pay to see your apartheid flick.
I'd rather see a documentary about apartheid than a Hollywood "romantic comedy" about Jim Crow casting in the twenty-first century.
I saw a film trailer about a group of group therapy clients in a major American city. NOT ONE of the 12 or so clients was anything but white. Are group therapy meetings really all-white as a rule, or is this a rule that Hollywood continues to impose on a polychromatic nation that is quickly changing?
Post a Comment