Why Torture Porn Isn't

In the Saw movies, by contrast, the victims do have a fighting chance, because, in a pretty smart narrative move, series co-creators James Wan and Leigh Whannell show us, quite early on in the first film, someone who has survived one of Jigsaw’s traps as a result of playing by his rules. So even though most of the major characters do end up dying in the three Saw films to date, we know there’s always a chance that they won’t. (Fans still argue about whether or not Cary Elwes’ Dr. Lawrence Gordon survived the events of the first Saw; since his fate is never revealed on-camera, one can’t be sure.)

None of these movies depends upon torture to quite the same degree as The Passion of the Christ, a movie explicitly conceived to make Christians understand the level of pain Jesus went through prior to and during crucifixion. Some will say Mel Gibson is more artful than Eli Roth or Saw IIand IIIdirector Darren Lynn Bousman; I say you could probably cut about 20 minutes of torture scenes in The Passion and not affect the plot. But I wouldn’t advocate that; it’s a good movie, and it’s also Gibson’s vision, for better or worse, just as Saw II is Bousman’s. I’m also a fan of Clive Barker’s 1987 Hellraiser, in which Barker implies that torture is sexually pleasurable for both victim and torturer (way further than Saw goes), and which probably did more than any other movie to bring sadomasochism into the mainstream, by turning a guy with a checkerboard carved on his face and multiple nails in his head into a pop-culture icon. Made 20 years ago, it’s still more extreme in its torture-related implications than anything on the market today; Barker has been pushing the idea of a Hellraiserremake, and a similarly themed project called Tortured Souls, but hasn’t found a studio willing to bite. Yet, Pinhead action figures are sold at Hot Topic, alongside newer toys based on Saw.

Justifying the merits of these movies to fellow critics (and certain members of the general public) can sometimes feel like arguing with your mother — you want her to respect your taste and point of view, but in the long run, isn’t it essential to like a few things that piss her off? So, it’s not particularly upsetting when elder statesmen of criticism like Roger Ebert or Kenneth Turan pan a Saw movie; we expect them to. The grating thing is how some critics don’t just pan the movies but also pan the people who watch them, acting as though we’re some depraved new breed who like unprecedented levels of hideousness, even as the movies themselves deliver exactly the same kind of visceral kicks horror films always have. “Unprecedented”? Just wait until people start trying to remake 1970s grindhouse fare like Ruggero Deodato’s infamous Cannibal Holocaust or Meir Zarchi’s interminable rape-and-revenge flick I Spit on Your Grave. As a matter of fact, you might not have to wait long — The Punisherdirector Jonathan Hensleigh just made an Italian-style cannibal movie called Welcome to the Jungle, and it has already screened a few times. (Upon seeing it, Jeffrey Wells of the Web site Hollywood Elsewhere commented, “It creeped me out in a way that I’m not likely to forget.”)

You know what’s really torturous? Endless moralistic scolding from people who don’t seem to get horror to begin with, and who should know better. There’s going to be enough sanctimony to go around in the coming election year — and it, too, will simply be a repeat of what has come before.