Why 'Torture Porn' Isn't

In the Saw movies, by contrast, we know the victims have a 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, throughout the three Saw films to date, most of the major characters do end up dying, we know there's always a chance 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 depend 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, 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-themed implications than anything out there today—Barker's been trying to push the idea of a remake and a similarly themed project called Tortured Souls, but he hasn't found a studio willing to bite, even as Pinhead action figures are sold at Hot Topic alongside newer toys based on Saw.

Arguing the merits of these movies to fellow critics can at times 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 at least somewhat essential to like a few things that piss her off? So it doesn't particularly rankle when elder statesmen of criticism like Roger Ebert or Kenneth Turan pan a Saw movie; we expect them to. The thing that's grating is the way 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 the same kind of visceral kicks horror films have always had. Unprecedented? Just wait till 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 titled Welcome to the Jungle, and it's already screened a few times (Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells, after seeing it, 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 film writers who don't seem to "get" horror to begin with and should know better. We're going to have enough sanctimony to go around in the coming election year—and it, too, will simply be a repeat of earlier trends.