ok lets all shit our pants to something new: post 2005 horror film thread

That doesn't mean I think it shouldn't have been made (or even if I think so that I would seriously espouse that argument), or that people are bad for watching it or wanting to watch it. Just that I think with movies that go off the rails and fail to return, it is very valid to say, "Nope. Not for me."

well see now i have to watch it

Ditto.

Ha! This would have been the moment where I pointedly avoided it!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/69/Diffrentstrokes.jpg

But everybody has different tolerances. jjjusten and Hal Jam and EIII are probably like "WTF wouldn't you watch Martyrs?"

― carl agatha, Wednesday, October 23, 2013 6:06 PM

actually I'm like "wtf wouldn't *I* watch martyrs" but everybody else can make their own decisions abt what they can handle

the thnig expressed most of my thoughts on the subject. avoiding disturbing content when it comes to horror movies seems like a fools errand and can result in missing out on some powerful + thoughtful aesthetic experiences (eg snowtown), or even just an entertaining one - if you read a description of a film where the coda involved a man's decapitated head being used to rape a naked + bound college coed you might say no thanks, not for me, but I don't think re-animator is an exceptionally disturbing experience to be avoided. the human centipede is a great example of a movie that's far less graphic than ppl expect, and I love it in part because the *idea* is more horrifying than anything displayed onscreen. martyrs on the other hand *is* exceptionally grueling, for me there are redeeming meta aspects in there but many here have found their mileage varying on that front.

either way there's no reason for anybody to endure needless psychic trauma, the irl world is traumatizing enough

I mean, not that there's anything wrong with staying on the ground-level floor of things like The Conjuring, but I like heights.

Human Centipede is surprisingly tame, actually. I liked it!

― carl agatha, 2013年10月24日 星期四 上午9:04 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the concept was so deeply horrifying that i couldn't sleep for weeks just thinking about it. by the time i got around to seeing it i was pretty much over the visceral reaction, and the women's acting was so bad that in execution it was just silly.

myriad comments upthread re favouring wikipedia over actually watching some of these movies is wholly otm. like hell i'm sitting through child rape, jesus christ.

The "bad place" argument is sort of fascinating to me. Someone pointed out recently how so many revenge movies spend as much or more time on the inevitable rape or other violation as they do on the revenge. So how should I feel sitting through that stuff? Obviously, I am meant to be disturbed (or titillated?), to some extent. But how am I supposed to feel during the revenge? Relieved? Excited? Thrilled? Entertained? That's why "Irreversible" provides such a strangely unique vantage, seeing as it gets both rape and revenge over with, so a degree, pretty early on, taking them out of the equation. And then also, because the movie has such a more overtly "arty" pedigree, does that put it above your more gormless, typical torture porn? Or does its pedigree provide me a moral "out" while I'm watching it, because I'm doing so in the name of Art? Haven't seen "12 Years a Slave" yet, but I imagine it introduces a similar conflict. Slavery was an outright horror, an atrocity. Do I need to see a movie to emphasize something that really needs no further emphasis in my mind? Am I a coward for not wanting to see its horror confirmed again? Am I a fool for subscribing to a recreation as a legitimate substitute for a horrifying reality I can never know? Is the fact that this particular movie depicts this particular horror in apparently greater detail/verisimilitude something to be praised? Enjoyed?

All sorts of stuff to think about that I honestly rarely think about, even though it's always swimming around up/in there all the time.

I don't watch them as much as I used to but I went through a very big slavery/racism epic phase that was partially informed by wanting an entertainment-based hook into some of the horrific back channels of American history and how it directly impacted my forebears, but mostly because I wanted to support movies that cast African-Americans in lead roles or cast a lot of African-Americans is supporting roles; in 2013, this means you are either watching a lot of Tyler Perry (or Tyler Perry-influenced) movies or a lot of slave movies. In that landscape, something like "Think Like A Man" comes across so much better than it would if there were still movies like "Eve's Bayou" and "The Inkwell" to challenge it.

I wanted to support movies that cast African-Americans in lead roles or cast a lot of African-Americans is supporting roles; in 2013, this means you are either watching a lot of Tyler Perry (or Tyler Perry-influenced) movies or a lot of slave movies.

This is OTM and super frustrating.

either way there's no reason for anybody to endure needless psychic trauma, the irl world is traumatizing enough

Yes. Like, I don't really need to see rape scenes, at least not the way they are done in 99% of horror movies (American Mary being a notable exception). The scene you mentioned in Reanimator, which I otherwise like a lot (I'm a bit of a Jeffrey Combs partisan anyway) comes close to ruining the movie for me.

Does it matter that the scene in Reanimator is so blatantly going for shock to the point of camp?

josh do you know what a trauma trigger is

it can ruin the whole camp angle for some ppl

that's the one scene in Reanimator (a film I love unabashedly) that really goes close to the "OMG I don't want to see this" line, but it dances along it pretty artfully. and the disembodied head is much more comical than horrifying in general (yelling at his body, etc.)

ymmv

as with most of this really

rape scenes are weird, it's not that it's a subject that shouldn't be addressed on-screen (of course it should) it's just that the depictions can vary so widely. there are right ways and wrong ways to approach it, but I can't really say which is which until I'm watching it. it's true that textual plot summaries don't really do it justice. although fwiw I can't really imagine how I would be cool with the depiction of the rape of a 14yo a la Megan is Missing, that is just some imagery I don't want in my head.

In some ways, playing a rape scene for camp is even worse than playing it seriously. The tied-up co-ed, who remains helpless and without any agency during the scene, is definitely traumatized by sexual violence but oh look, it's a disembodied head so it's funny. It minimizes rape into something we can all brush off as hilarious!

I can think of ways to make that scene funny without being potentially movie ruining. Don't have the woman totally naked, bosom heaving on the table in a way that sexualizes the violence, for one. If she were wearing a dress, you would still get the point without feeling like her assault is used as an excuse for a titillating (lol?) boob shot. Instead of having the guy rescue her, have her rescue herself and maybe soccer kick the head away, then she gets some agency and we get to see the headless corpse bumbling around looking for his head some more, which is always funny. Two small directorial decisions would take that scene from cringe inducing to pretty great, IMO (with the acknowledgement that making it great for me would not necessarily make it great for everybody).

agree the nudity/boob shot is totally gratuitous

another thread fave w/ big warning stickers is deadgirl. it's got a lot to say abt objectification and there's zero titillation but def not for the squeamish.

yeah I've been thinking of watching that but dunno if I could sell it to my wife

y'know, based on the description

The issue with Megan is Missing that was messing with my head relates directly to my first post about it -- the rape is not just in the movie, but it is being filmed for the titillation of others. In the movie, Megan's photo was identified on a fetish porn site, and you can imagine where it goes from there. So there were multiple layers to the rape --
1) the fact that it was happening at all
2) the fact that the viewer is subsequently watching it as a viewer of the movie "Megan is Missing" and
3) the fact that in the movie "Megan is Missing" it was intended to be used in a titillating fashion for people (who?) to presumably pay for and watch on the internet for their own pleasure

The combination of those three things was what sent me over the edge into intrusive thoughts and general mental upset.

That said, it's not that it was gratuitous or played for titillation for the viewer of "Megan is Missing"; it's that it was horrifically violent and played for titillation for the viewer of rape porn, which is not the same thing as the movie Megan is Missing.

Does that clarify what bothered me a little better? I wasn't prepared to really go into it in that much detail, but it's much more complicated than "yuk child rape."

yo, that makes perfect sense, yo.

Yes, it totally does.

I also watched THE BASEMENT, a super-fun 8mm movie shot by a bunch of dorks in 1989 (but I can post it here since it didn't get released until 2011). It's an anthology film, so you get 4x the stupidness. All the dialogue is dubbed in, of course, and it's really foul-mouthed, which is amusingly incongruous with the squeaky-clean we-made-this-in-high-school vibe. Highly enjoyable.

josh do you know what a trauma trigger is

No, I totally get it. I wasn't asking to be snide, just asking if it mattered. There's a whole strain of the campily horrible stuff - Gordon Lewis, Peter Jackson, Troma, et al. - stuff that just goes so extreme it gets ridiculous, by design. But it's a tricky road, why any/all portrayals of rape in film are bad (even though more often than not I find it extremely troubling, too, no matter the context) but the myriad other violations in horror movies are somehow quantifiably less offensive. Like, a fake rape riles, but a fake beheading or disemboweling or cannibalism or flaying? Eh. You know? There is so much tangled up psychologically with sex and violence and their depiction that I suppose it stands to reason their combination in the most visceral, unpleasant sense would be exponentially harder to unpack.

Man, I totally forgot about Deadgirl. I'm not sure that movie is ultimately any good, but there's definitely something going on there.

Like, a fake rape riles, but a fake beheading or disemboweling or cannibalism or flaying? Eh.

Real rape happens often to a lot of people, or to people that we know and often are close to. Beheading and disemboweling and cannibalism... not so much.

Beheading videos are such the rage that within just the last week Facebook went back and forth on allowing them, no?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/22/facebook-allows-beheading-videos-graphic-content_n_4143244.html

That does not make beheading something that happens more often or to more people than rape.

In case it needs to be said, I am in no way saying that rape should never be depicted in movies (just as I don't think rape jokes are categorically off limits), but I am absolutely saying that it is important to criticize depictions of rape that portray rape as sexy, or positive, or hilarious at the expense of the person being raped. Mostly just that these conversations are important.

My other point is that there's nothing wrong with drawing boundaries about what you will and won't see, really for any reason.

Agree on both points. But my point was that the simulated depiction of horrible acts, no matter how horrifying or how often they do or don't happen in real life, is a moot debate. It's all horrifying. What's intolerable for one may not be for another, yes, but I can't pinpoint one fake transgression as necessarily worse than another. One of the most frightening things I've ever seen in a film was in "Schindler's List," seeing the faces of those little kids hiding in a pool of raw sewage, caught in the beam of a flashlight as they were discovered. Real kids, fake shit, recreating something that really happened. Haunts me to this day. Is it fair to say the scene was played for thrills, in at least one definition of the word? I think so. Where would I put it on a tier of "horror?" Dunno. How would I feel if it was played for laughs? Likely offended.

But my point was that the simulated depiction of horrible acts, no matter how horrifying or how often they do or don't happen in real life, is a moot debate. It's all horrifying. What's intolerable for one may not be for another, yes, but I can't pinpoint one fake transgression as necessarily worse than another.

congrats

Spielberg, so much to answer for

congrats

Oh, you know what I mean. I mean, it's so surreal to even offer the dialectic, but is watching a zombie perform oral sex with a disembodied head in a self-consciously OTT movie harder to watch than a slave being beaten or whipped into a bloody pulp? They're both horrible, but the latter is based in history and not intended as transgressive, whereas the former is totally invented and intended to shock. Does the fact that the first is played as twisted comedy make it worse, or harder to watch than the latter simulated act? Obviously different eyes and brains will have different reactions, but as much as I understand why that is, I really can't say one is qualitatively "worse" than the other.

Why are you even making that comparison? I mean, my original point was that it's important to have discussions about rape scenes in movies. Is it also important to discuss beheading, et al? It's not important to me, but I wouldn't begrudge someone else doing it. Is it important to discuss a movie in which someone beats a slave into a bloody pulp? Hell yes it is - context, intent, perspective, the race of the people involved in making the movie, just to name a few things.

It's silly to set up that dichotomy and not what this conversation has even been about, other than my initial response to point out (correctly) that rape has a real life impact on quantitatively more people than beheading and cannibalism do.

One of six U.S. women has experienced an attempted or completed rape.[146] More than a quarter of college age women report having experienced a rape or rape attempt since age 14.[147] Some types of rape are excluded from official reports altogether (the FBI's definition, for example, used to exclude all rapes except forcible rapes of females), because a significant number of rapes go unreported even when they are included as reportable rapes, and also because a significant number of rapes reported to the police do not advance to prosecution.[148]

yeah we're not really talking abt qualitatively ranking the horrific, the point is that rape is still a sickeningly common epidemic, so there's going to be a heightened sensitivity towards it, especially in a genre that has had a historically problematic relationship with the depiction of woman as it is. I brought the reanimator up because it's such a goofily surreal movie but ms carl is right to point out that that makes it worse in many ways.

on a related note, I didn't like the evil dead remake much anyway but retaining the woods rape scene was pretty o_O - that was like the first plot point on the list they should've given an overhaul

on a related note, I didn't like the evil dead remake much anyway but retaining the woods rape scene was pretty o_O - that was like the first plot point on the list they should've given an overhaul

― a hard dom is good to find (Edward III), Friday, 25 October 2013 09:34 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, that pissed me off on a grand scale, doubly so the apparent 'oh it's just a headnod' blitheness about it

Yeah, of all the things to keep from the original ...

I was just reacting, honestly, to the way some, including me, find certain things more offensive or horrific than others, often for deeply personal reasons. But trying to be objective about it, I found/find it really hard to say one incredibly gruesome, horrible thing to be worse than another, even when I'm as guilty as the aforementioned as anyone else. Murder is far more common than rape, but that doesn't make the rampant depiction of murder in movies less horrible. We've just all been more systematically inured. Which is in and of itself disturbing. The fact that rape doesn't find its way casually into many films, horror or otherwise, shows how seriously it is (and should be taken), but the fact that gruesome murders pervade cinema - man, the glut of serial killer films alone - shows how far we've been shifted as a society.

also: when a man is writing/directing a scene in which a woman is being raped for cheap horror thrills (which ime is the usual permutation) there are just so many levels to that which are ferociously and fundamentally indefensible xp

Murder is far more common than rape

uh, are you sure about that

especially in a genre that has had a historically problematic relationship with the depiction of woman as it is

Yes yes, a very good point. This stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum. Back to my initial comments, a lot of my reluctance to watch a movie like Dead Girl is that I don't trust the genre.

based on those stats above it seems like 30 million women in this country have dealt w/at least an attempted rape

The fact that rape doesn't find its way casually into many films, horror or otherwise

Are you sure about that?

yeah josh, i'm trying very hard to not engage in a typical ilx pile-on here, but i don't think i've known or met anyone who's been murdered xxxp

yeah I don't think 1 in 6 american women have been victims of murder or attempted murder

I'm not calling you out man cuz I'm guilty in this area as well, but there's a lot of male privilege encoded in yr posts, it's shit we don't have to worry abt on a day to day basis, so we don't

the murder rate in the US *is* insanely high, and is more readily reported/easier to quantify than rape ("oh hey look there's a dead body!"), making statistical comparison a bit tricky. I can't authoritatively say that Josh is wrong but I dunno if the numbers are really that clear.

RAINN says someone is sexually assaulted every 2 minutes in the US. Dunno if the murder rate is quite that high.

this says 1 murder ever 34 minutes

i don't think i've known or met anyone who's been murdered
i have! but i've known a lot more people who have been raped. either way, i'm not trying to rank which is more horrifying. that's a waste of time.