What do you guys think about the popularity of movies like the saw or hostel series?

The Saw series is kinda interesting. I haven’t seen them all but they’re creative, I think. Hostel was the worst movie I’ve ever seen in my entire life. It was pretty much walking into a theatre and watching porn for an hour, and bad porn, and then the rest consisted of a weird plot that I thoroughly did not enjoy. NEGATIVE.

I’ve never watched any of them. Just zero interest in watching protracted suffering without some kind of moral or emotional point.

Why would I watch torture for torture’s sake?

Personally, I don’t get the popularity of horror movies at all, but I never have. I don’t mind something with a story, like Alien, or some of the old horror classics from the fifties and sixties, but in general, I have no interest in movies that are about nothing but shock and fear.

I think the trend to more disgusting horror movies is at least partly about people being desensitized to violence, so they have to ramp up the graphic violence to keep scaring the audience.

@deni I agree with you about the first saw movie. It was shocking, but it was still all about plot and theme. I can’t say the same for the rest of them though. I stopped watching those types of movies after I saw Hostel. I was genuinely ashamed of myself for watching that movie.

@jaketheripper Me too! I still feel like a lesser person for actually sitting through that entire movie. Soooo bad.

What I really hate is commercials/previews for these movies. I feel bombarded with images that I never wanted to see.

The popularity of horror movies in general is an interesting topic, especially when you get to torture movies like Saw and Hostel. They’re a whole different animal than psychological thrillers.

I thought Hostel was terrible, mainly because of its poor plot-line and acting. The concept is sort of interesting (and certainly scary for some people who are about to do some European traveling), but the poor quality of the movie didn’t really make that concept too compelling.

The Saw series is a little different for me. I really liked the first Saw movie. Yes, it was gruesome, which (to me) is just another way to have a higher thrill factor in the “more explosions, more blood, more shock” kind of media we have these days. But it also had a high psychological component and an interesting concept about life and death.

Unfortunately, the later Saw movies got increasingly worse. I don’t think I’m going to see Saw VI (or VII, or VIII, or however many they make). I’ve heard that a different director did all the Saw movies after the first one, which would explain the change. The later movies are just filled with pointless gore and torture that disgusts more than scares. Kind of pointless if you ask me.

@ParaParaYukiko my thoughts exactly

It worries me, actually, that so many people are interested in seeing movies with (what I think) are no redeeming values and that glorify graphic, meaningless violence.

I should probably add that I have never seen any of these movies. I have not seen a horror movie made since sometime in the 60s, unless you count sci-fi movies that happen to have giant, barely seen monsters (the Alien genre) or full on comedies like Army of Darkness. I have never seen a Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Chucky, Japanese wet girl horror remake, or anything of the sort, and I never will.

I saw the first saw movie when it was out on DVD, because my roommate had it. I had never heard of it before because I don’t really keep up with horror movies. The psychological aspect of that movie was pretty well done, and I’d never seen a movie like that before, so it was shocking. Now there are so many movies out there doing the whole torture porn thing, so people can’t really be shocked by it anymore. I never saw the rest of the saw movies or hostel, but I saw Untraceable, which I thought was pretty bad. (That’s the movie with the website killwithme.com, where if there are more hits on the website, the people die faster.) It was really hypocritical that they made a movie with all this stuff in it, then tried to offer commentary on how bad it is to watch it. I think it’s so much worse to make a torture porn movie than to watch it on TV.

I prefer old school Halloween movies. Michael Meyers!

I’m a big horror fan. Why? I don’t know. But I find them entertaining.
Then again, I work at a haunted house each fall so I’m a fan of anything “scary” or Halloween related. I think people like imagining what they would do in those situations, or just getting scared from an adrenaline rush. As for why we love gore, I don’t know. It just happens.

The first couple Saw movies were good. Especially the first one because it was so unique and original. But now it’s just getting ridiculous, I’ve heard they’re going at least up to number 8.

Hostel on the other hand was horrible and I deeply regret watching the second one.

@gussnarp Army of Darkness is such a joke.

@erikaVT Isn’t that the point?

@gussnarp Yeah, definitely. I’m agreeing with you. We have all those movies, my boyfriend loves them. Personally, I can see it once and be good hahaa

I feel the same way as @aphilotus I don’t get it and am not interested.

In fact I don’t see why others are. Now I enjoy horror, thrillers, and psychological thrillers. But I do have a point where I draw the line.

My biggest problem with horror movies is they’re not scary anymore. A good horror movie leaves you on the edge of your seat, it builds anticipation and then when it’s time to scare the crap out of you (which is the visceral thrill for which horror fans attend these movies), it doesn’t have to be over the top. The problem is that someone will get a good idea, and try a new way of achieving the desired effect, but then everyone else immitates it, and both the filmmakers and the audiences miss the point. Good horror movies were traditionally things like Psycho….not a whole lot of violence, but a LOT of suspense, and just this creepiness that permeated the movie. Then there was the Exorcist, it really made good use of suspense, and drew fear from teh idea that something could attack you from the inside, something unseen and other worldly. Then in the late 70s we got Halloween, and we really got the first slasher flick, but it was SO much more than a slasher flick. It was this idea of this unstoppable force which could get you by surprise…not really all the different from either Psycho or the Exorcist, but more visceral, different source for the horror…but the genuinely scary part of it was the suspense. In the 80s, the concept was carried forward by Jason and Freddy, and the first Friday the 13th was pretty good, on par with Halloween, just more gruesome, and the first Nightmare on Elm Street put the villain inside your own head. But that was also when sequels started…we got like a dozen Friday the 13ths and about 8 Halloweens and Nightmare on Elm Streets, and every horror movie followed that formula. But what all the sequels and all the imitators lacked was any sense of suspense…..you knew what was going to happen, it was all camp value. What happens is whatever the latest gimmick is that makes the genre seem fresh again invariably becomes a big seller, because good quality horror is hard to make and hard to find. So, someone comes up with a good idea, like they did with Saw (the first one was great, almost like Seven from the victims’ point of view), and everyone copies it, and we get Saw 6 and Hostel 2, and they miss the point. Yes, Saw pushed the envelope in terms of gore, but it also had this genuine creep factor, real suspense…but all that was stripped away in favor of just showing the money shot.

So, I don’t think it’s any different than what has ever happened. Our sensibilities these days are such that gore which would have turned off audiences in the past doesn’t shock as much (we’re desensitized to it because we’ve seen it), so when a good idea comes along, so do the copycats, but because the copycats can never make something we’ve seen “new” again, they pretty much have to stick ot the formula, which includes gore for gore’s sake. What it means to me is that audiences are simply not all the discerning, people will continue to buy this crap because the unwashed masses who go to these things just don’t get the differenence between real, visceral fear built off suspense, and “gotcha” horror where the boogedy man is coming for you. If you can make it look good, that’s good enough…it’s the same reason you can sell $200 million in tickets to a 90 minute car chase, but indie/art-house movies barely crack $20M most of the time.

Now, there is a bigger message…anyone who is really interested in the decline of our culture should read Chris Hedges’ book “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and th Triumph of Spectacle”. It discusses how just like other cultures which have fallen, our culture is exhibiting the same signs of decline….people are distracted by the visceral, the spectacle, they don’t want to think, and our culture provides them with a number of opportunities to shut off the critical thinking parts of their brains and not question when say our government fails to regulate securities well enough and it bankrupts our government, while CEOs walk away with billions. Just like the Romans who enjoyed seeing live people get torn to shreds by the lions, the uncritical, unthinking masses in our culture are turned on by the pornlike spectacle of realistic looking pain and suffering. Bottom line, movies like this are a sign of a number of things…lazy filmmaking, uncritical audiences, AND the fall of our society brought on by our ability to be distracted by the wrong things.

@dalepetrie Lurve for such a well thought out answer.

I keep reading there’s little or no link between vioence in movies and violence in society. I will go my grave refusing to believe that.

@dalepetrie The problem with Hedge’s idea, at least as I understand it from reading your post, (aside from not being very original) is that it assumes that societies change to become more interested in spectacle than in substance, when the truth is that we have always been that way. You could find people critiquing society for embracing spectacle over substance in the 1800’s or the 1700’s just as much as today. And if you could actually look at the popular entertainment over time, you would find that little has changed. The gladiators of Rome became the bear baiting of medieval England. Were we somehow fated to the same end as Rome, we would have gotten there by now.

@Austinlad I had a psych class in college where we discussed the topic of violence in video games and if that increases violence in children. And in fact there have been researched, well-conducted, studies that say it does in fact increase a tendency towards violence. I don’t see why it would be much difference with movies. It is all a semantic argument though and it does depend on the audience. I say semantics because it doesn’t necessarily increase violence but rather it increases other things that lead towards a belief that violence is an appropriate action in some circumstances.

@Austinlad, @RedPowerLady, There was a study that tried to determine if crime increased when new action movies were released (don’t know if they included horror movies in this or not). They found that on the opening weekend of big action movies crime decreased significantly. This does not indicate that watching violent movies makes people less violent, only that all the young men with excess testosterone were in movie theaters instead of out committing crime.

@gussnarp I knew someone would say that. You are right that those studies show no increase. That is what leads to the belief it does not have such affects. However studies that focus on focus-groups of individuals rather than on society at large do show a trend towards an increase in violence. I understand the alternative argument and it is a reasonable one because it has its own studies. However these studies are quite interesting and very clear when done at a more individual level.

I think they are a great opportunity for man’s inner, darker desires and personality to be entertained. Everyone, deep down, likes violence and destruction.

This thread, as is the case with most discussions of modern horror, makes me shake my head sadly and say, “People just don’t get it.”

It always surprises me when people say they liked the first Saw movie but none of the others, and then also claim to prefer more thoughtful horror. The first one had crappy acting, crappy writing, crappy characters… The subsequent films become increasingly character-driven, the psychology becomes more intricate, the acting improves tenfold…

And as for Hostel… Well. You have to understand Eli Roth (or just be a plain ol’ sick bastard) to like it.

@dalepetrie You are right. Great response. Excessive guts and gore does not replace good plot/suspense.

@RedPowerLady What I intended to point out was that the study was not capable of showing a relation between movies and crime or violence, not that one does not exist. I just thought it was amusing that the set up this study to examine one thing, and there was another factor that changed the nature of the study.

Saw was just like the movie phone booth. Hostil sucked and the second one was worse. Saw was good until they made number 2. I love horror movies because I like to be shocked and thrilled. Another overkill is final destination I loved 1 & 2 but the rest sucked. I mean get over it as soon as possible lol we need to be more original. I love zombie movies. In fact my dream is to be a zombie in a movie lol but the rest is just overkill

@gussnarp Ah thank you for clarifying. That is indeed amusing.

@gussnarp – The problem is, neither I nor Hedges was saying anything that contradicts what you said. Yes, people are prone to distraction and this is not the symptom, the problem is that because this is a standard human condition, it is exploited…these types of things just point out the fatal flaw in our society which has been a fatal flaw in other socieites. Why some have not suffered the downfall is because some have retained an element of literacy in their culture and have not wholly revelled in lowest common denominator trash culture. Look at Rob Zombie’s movies, they are every bit as sadistic and gory as any of the Saw films, but they have an element to them which utilizes unpredictablity and relentless brute force to impart a genuine sense of suspense and terror. What I’m pointing to is a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself, I certainly don’t think giving the people what they want is going to lead to our destruction…I think people will want to leave less and less to the imagination as they are given the opportunity however, AND I do think that it’s a downward spiral. Consider sex as entertainment for example. In the 1950s, Lucy and Ricky couldn’t sleep in the same bed, in the 1960s we had hippie free love…the culture was very sexual, yet Jim Morrison was arrested for whipping it out on stage, in the 1970s, we had big budget porn movies in mainstream theaters, but we also had government agencies busting those theaters…in the 1980s we started to see ads for condoms on TV, yet they couldn’t sell Playboy in the 7–11s, in the 1990s we started to see lesbian kisses on TV, but we also saw actresses blackballed for being in those scenes, and today we can all but 3 of George Carlin’s 7 dirty words on TV, and we have commercials for Girls Gone Wild with naked women having only a black bar to obscure their most deicate parts shown across the screen while they make out willy nilly….porn stars date rock stars and have their own reality shows. People eat horse rectums on prime time television. Violence is the same thing from the fear driven into the hearts of Americans by the War of the Worlds in the 30s, to today’s slasher porn…there IS a clear progression. There IS a substantive difference.

So you can argue that any culture is in decline the second it is created, it’s just a slow decline, we have few areas that are left to the imagination anymore, and our educational institutions don’t teach us to read between the lines…because we no longer need to. It’s a vicious cycle, in the 20s, one could be titilated by a flash of leg, and would have to use his mind, his imagination to fill in the blanks…and he could do so because society insisted he have the tools to think. People are no longer challenged to think, and our culture indeed often actively discourages them from doing so. And the powerful have siezed upon the opportunity granted by the people themselves…no one pays attention, most people don’t even vote, in fact you usually have more people not voting than you have voting for both Presidential candidates combined in this country. We are fed garbage, and we emulate garbage, and more and more people are sucked into the spectacle full time, 24/7, whereas before this type of spectacle was decried, but it was also enjoyed in moderation, as a guilty pleasure. Now you can revel in your own ignorance 24 hours a day, and THAT is why our culture is in the end days. Slasher porn is a symptom of that.

@dalepetrie Well, I don’t agree with you that it represents a downward spiral, or a culture in decline. I’ll acknowledge that it takes more to shock people as they get used to more shocking things, but I don’t think that the general tendency to unthinking entertainment is really changing, I think each generation thinks it is changing, but it’s really the same as it’s ever been. We can’t be a culture in decline because our culture is Roman culture, and medieval culture, and renaissance culture. It’s not like anything really ends, it just changes.

Totally agree, I just see it accellerating and being at the lowest point so far, I see we don’t have much further to fall, and I see in the economic decline the consequences of cultural illiteracy which started when our culture was first born and has been growing exponentially since. It’s kind of like we know the sun will explode in 6 billion years, we’re on the path to world destruction, but time moves slowly and it takes a long time…but 5.999999 billion years from now it will be the end days, I see these horror movies as proof that we’ve lost within our culture the very desire to be informed by an large. People who come onto a Q&A board to discuss matters like this are actually few and far between, the rest are watching Dancing with the Stars.

The Saw was BORING. All-device, no story.

All show no substance.

I have never understood the point of senseless violence and death. If I want to watch that garbage I’ll watch the news thanks.. – LB

I like horror movies, but I prefer the ones where they DON’T throw buckets of pig intestines and blood at you. I like psychological horror. Anyone can cut up some high school kids with a chain saw or some other power tool and call it a horror movie. Real horror makes you imagine what is around the corner, not throwing it in your face.

I saw Rob Zombie’s version of Halloween. Worst. Horror. Movie. Ever. He should stick to music. all his movies have rape scenes, I don’t think depictions of rape belong in horror movies, sort of like Roswell-type aliens and snakes have nothing to do with Halloween.

Hallmark of the decline of society.

See also Rome

It’s not my genre. I watched the first Saw and House of a Thousand Corpse on DVD back in the day. I think those were the first of this generation of torture porn. I thought they were well done, captivating, and visually impressive. But I’m not particularly fond of watching marathon style torture, so after that I decided I’d had my fill.

But I loved the Eli Roth’s Grindhouse trailer so I might check out Hostel.

@BBQsomeCows I suspect you perception of violent movies as a indication that our society is declining is dependent on a thin historical background.

There is nothing new about spectator violence. It’s just that up until the last century, when movies were invented, the violence was all real. On the whole people have always been drawn to bloody spectacle, but now our darker curiosities can be satisfied without anybody getting hurt. I’d call that an improvement. :)