In the 2000s, there has been a resurgence of films influenced by the horror genre combining graphic violence and sexually suggestive imagery, labeled "torture porn" by critics.
Despite an abundance of articles to the contrary, assign as "torture porn" never really developed into anything more than a collection of movies covering up gratuitous violence as halfhearted social commentary.
The Eli Roth film, Hostel (2005), was the first to be called "torture porn" by the critic in 2006, but the classification has been applied to Saw by James Wan (2004) and its sequels, directed by Rob Zombie, Devil's Rejects (2005) ,Wolf Creek (2005) by Greg Mclean and the earlier film Baise-moi (2000) by Virginie Despentes.
A difference between this group of films and earlier horror films is that they are often mainstream Hollywood films that receive a large release and have high production values, or I may say” had high production values”.
The so-called "torture porn" sub-genre has been very profitable: Saw, made for $1.2 million, grossed over $100 million worldwide, while Hostel, which cost less than $5 million to produce, grossed over $80 million. Lionsgate, the studio behind the films, has also made considerable gains in its stock price from the box office showing.
Torture Porn, and especially in Hostel by Eli Roth, differs from that of his predecessors, too, in its oddly monotonal tone and look. In the work of Craven or Carpenter, the victims were given at least a semblance of personality, even if they were archetypes: the nerd, the jock, the slut, the virgin…
The illusion was paid to the notion of actual people, in the hope that the audience might recognize something of themselves up there on the screen.
Torture Porn usually doesn't do this. The characters are barely distinguishable from one another, and are uniformly self-centered. Some would call this a failure, not only in human terms, but also in cinematic, since it diminishes the viewers' emotional involvement in the story, so their interest.
Influential director George A. Romeo with his series of "Dead", as Dawn of the Dead (1978) has stated, "I don’t get the torture porn films", "they're lacking metaphor”.
The genre itself, also speaks to the lack of empathy in contemporary American culture, as well as other trends, the fragmentation of narrative, the increasingly utilitarian, disposable tenor of human relations.
Recently, we have seen many box-office failure with the first Grindhouse, Grindhouse 2 (2007) directed by Roberto Rodriguez, Quentin Tarentino and Eli Roth is unlikely to materialise, except perhaps as a straight to DVD item. Hostel 2 opened in the US last year to disappointing box-office returns over its first weekend. We get the culture we deserve, and the US is realizing that it perhaps deserves better than this.
But newly remade for U.S. audiences Funny Games by Michael Haneke, and debuting in a fortunate timing wake of the genre's so-called commercially dead, the fact that his first version was first made 10 years ago in Austria excludes its inclusion in the « torture porn canon », since at that time (not to mention in that country) the term hadn't yet been invented. His film takes on greater artistic proportions than likely the director or the film's distributor, Warner Independent.
In fact, in creating a film that effectively takes all of the hallmarks of torture porn, Michael Haneke has not only made a gripping and terrifying work of art, but also effectively revives the horror genre as a whole by completely deconstructing it. We are not in a typical horror movie, the deadly reality of Funny Games could have been in the news in brief in our daily paper, where two psychotic young men take a family hostage.
The irony, is that horror films are typically shot and produced on the cheap precisely because they attract a lowest-common-denominator audience looking for easy, graphic, and gratuitous thrills.
In Funny Games, it's a realism meant to demonstrate how people who enjoy such movies are accessories to the proliferation of violence in media, and Michael Haneke pulls it off with a master's touch: almost complete avoiding of any and all on-screen violence which may likely turn some viewers off. That this relentless barrage of psychological and physical torture is extremely well made and powerfully performed, Naomi Watts hurls herself into her physically demanding role with heroic conviction.
Funny Games exploits, examines and deconstructs these same conventions, and will haunt viewers long after they leave the theater.
So, what does the future hold for the Torture Porn? A all lot of financial failure due to a low quality cinematic.
We'll know soon enough whether we still have a taste for "torture porn", luckily we are seeing a new breed of films uprising the genre, where the psychological aspect takes and surely needed a more important place as in terrific Haneke’s work, not to mention the promising Savage Grace, a film starring Julianne Moore, directed by Tom Kalin, based on the shocking Barbara Daly Baekeland murder case, which happened in London in 1972. The bloody crime caused a stir on both sides of the Atlantic where a dysfunctional, incestuous relationship between a mother and her son illustrates an entire Oedipal problematic.
The rebirth or the alternative as it was just during the financial high of Torture Porn, could be understood as well, in L’adversaire (2002) with a stunning contribution from Daniel Auteuil, brilllantly directed by Nicole Garcia. When a man murders his wife, children and parents, the ensuing investigation reveals that he's been living a lie for almost 20 years, based on a true story, provoking at the time a big wave of nightmares in France. The film does offer a truly disturbing exploration of the darker side of the human psyche.
As the Torture Porn diminishing, so many movies are in fact chilling experiences, involving not only one dimension to the genre but a more accomplished view, with a clever realism. Giving a boost, and expectancy to an all industry.
