Toner_Low

SPLATTER IN THE ART HOUSE REDUX

I haven't seen the art films you mention, but I have seen SAW's 1 and 2 and both of the HOSTEL films. For me, HOSTEL's 1 and 2 were two of my top five films of their respective years -- and while I wouldn't really put Zombie's DEVIL'S REJECTS into the category, since you mention him, I'll say that it was my favorite film of that year, along with MRS. HENDERSON PRESENTS.

Anyway, I feel like an article such as the one below practically jams its hand down my pocket searching for my two cents.

These are all random notes.

AUDITION is a stupendously dull movie. I unfriended the moronic redneck who suggested that I see it. He also thought 300 and 30 DAYS OF NIGHT were the best films of 2007, which shows you the mentality of the idiot I was dealing with. This is a man who claims Jesus and Darth Vader as his personal heroes and sees no inherent contradiction.

I have very little interest in watching unpleasantness. But all of horror deals with a certain degree of unpleasantness. I think what's lurking under the surface of the unpleasantness is what matters. I remember being just as mortified -- if not more so -- by ELECTION and AMERICAN PIE, both of which signaled turning points in American film. Each used intense public humiliation as tools for laughter. I cringed as the audience laughed. So, take that for what it's worth.

Let me limit my discussion to the SAW and HOSTEL franchises. I enjoy any film that gives me an extreme experience. Ebert tags film as an emotional medium. One of the powers of film is to take us to the brink of extreme experiences without pushing us over the edge. (I enjoy films about romance and marriage, but I by no means want to have either experience in my life.) By encountering torture, we explore it without experiencing it. In a world filled with religious nuts decapitating people and showing it over the internet, clearly we're doing something as a culture by using this as a bathosphere.

The SAW films are ones I can pretty quickly discredit because they have such huge logic flaws that make them unwatchable. Every film has the central logic flaw of "this isn't happening," but the SAW movies violate their own logic. Still, the central conceit is an interesting one, and if they would do one more script polish, they'd have good movies. In the SAW films, a dying cancer patient is incensed at how casually his life is treated by his doctors, so he uses his last days and willpower to seek out people who are throwing their lives away. Life that they take for granted. Life that the killer cannot take for granted. He constructs puzzles where they have to mutilate themselves to escape, but they will at least have to value their lives to do so. This is a classic morality tale about taking seriously the most precious of things. Pretty good premise for a movie. Too bad it gets wasted with plot holes.

HOSTEL is an whole other animal. I love these movies. They are true Grand Guignol, and I appreciate them on that level. When *I* have to avert my eyes from the screen, a movie has my respect. When my friend and I saw people walk out, he murmured to me, "Casualties."

The first HOSTEL film is a taut thriller that deals not so much with torture (as with the original TEXAS CHAINSAW, you see less gore than you think you see, due to good editing and sound effects) as with our cultural fears over the fallen remnants of the Soviet Union (the backdrop), the fascination with "extreme" sports (a JACKASS critique, perhaps), and warnings about valuing drugs and sex as an end in themselves. The characters in the first film start off in Amsterdam for the obvious attractions. The need for more-of-the-same-but-better leads them to the town where the Factory is. When humans are used as commodities (such as in prostitution), little does it occur to the buyer that they, too, may be a commodity. Thus, the film's moral compass. It is a cautionary tale reminiscent of the horrible town of temptations in PINOCCHIO. It does this with a fair amount of wit and suspense and is definitely "more than meets the eye." A classic morality tale with the same blood and guts we associate with the Brothers Grimm. Well, a bit more than that. But only a bit.

HOSTEL 2 begins in such a manner that we think it'll be a remake, only with girls. But these girls are looking for peace and serenity... an escape from the type of boys who lead the cast of the first film. Again, Roth tells us to be careful what we wish for. Quickly, though, it turns into a film about the type of men who bid on these victims and then go to be the victimizers. It's a fascinating, witty twist. The path of those men -- and the women they hound -- becomes totally unpredictable. And very, very sly. Frankly, it turned into an out-and-out comedy. Not slapstick with people doing pratfalls in entrails, but genuine character comedy, where the laughs are the logical result of the ironies of who these sadists are and what they're doing. People so immature that they would pay to do this are worthy both of hatred and ridicule. Their cruel myopia undoes them in the end... as does their conviction that their patriarchal power of money cannot be topped. It also becomes an examination of how the business of the Factory operates. In essence, it wisely does everything a sequel can do. It answers the questions raised by the first film instead of giving us more of the same. I felt as if I were watching a logical enhancement of this universe. It was rare for a sequel. A bold move.

When Kubrick set about to make DR. STRANGELOVE, it began as a serious film. But he found that he could only really truly address the insanity of M.A.D. by portraying those who saw the policy it as a good idea in a comical manner. Ditto for HOSTEL 2.

This was a very smart movie. You have to know where to look.

Are they critiques of violence? Sometimes. But more than that, they are cathartic. It's more a question of whether or not that's a fulfilling catharsis or an empty one. I still can't watch DEAD RINGERS because it's too depressing. Go figure.