The interblags have been all atwitter over the forthcoming release of Juno scribe Diablo Cody’s next film, a horror-comedy titled Jennifer’s Body. Aside from simply being another horror comedy, it stars Megan Fox, the Angelina Jolie doppelganger and star of the Transformers films, a fact seemingly more important than anything else related to the film. For most, this is the most appealing part of the movie, as there was once a rumor going around that she would be naked in it. Sadly, the rumor has been proven false, and once again we are robbed of a wonderful distraction to her terrible acting.

Concerning the experience filming Jennifer’s Body, Megan Fox had this to say:

Diablo is so wicked and funny and it was hard to really make a film that was up to her script but I think Karyn (Kusama, the director) did a pretty good job and I think it’s one of the most interesting movies coming out this year for sure. It’s offbeat comedy.  It’s inappropriate comedy which I find to be the funniest.

Now the plot summary, yanked from Wikipedia:

The film follows Jennifer (Megan Fox), a mean-girl cheerleader possessed by a demon who begins feeding off the boys in a Minnesota farming town. It is then up to her “plain Jane” best friend Needy (Amanda Seyfried) to kill Jennifer, escape from a correctional facility and go after lead singer Nikolai (Adam Brody) and his Satan-worshiping rock band responsible for the transformation.

Aside from the glaring miscast of Amanda Seyfriend as a “plain Jane” character, the rest of the cast seems to be a mix of nothing more than annoying teens and all the adults in Juno, which is actually kind of cool ’cause J. K. Simmons is awesome. This, however, says nothing of the plot, which is so ridiculous it’s mind-blowing.

I have nothing more to say regarding this movie. Megan Fox sucks, Diablo Cody is overrated, and I’m getting sick of the incessant fawning over this film and the uproar over Fox not getting nude in it.

Of course, I’ll still see it, ’cause I’m a sheep.

Mr. Disgusting over at Bloody-Disgusting reported a week and a half ago that Lars von Trier secured financing for his horror film AntiChrist. Filming is set to commence in Cologne, Germany, and is centered on “a couple mourning the loss of their child who retreat to a cabin in the woods, where they soon encounter strange, terrifying occurrences.” Despite possessing a seemingly formulaic premise, Lars von Trier has been putting out great films at a consistent rate (I mean, did you see Dancer in the Dark? Bjork deserved a fuckin’ Oscar for her performance), and as such will most likely be a breath of fresh air in the horror industry.

Lars von Trier was part of the Dogme 95 collective, a style of avant-garde film-making in which the goal is “to purify filmmaking by refusing expensive and spectacular special effects, postproduction modifications and other gimmicks.” The goal behind the once vibrant Dogme 95 collective was to focus on the story and the actors’ performances, a seemingly essential though often overlooked aspect of most modern horror films. The torture porn sub-genre is an ideal example of this, eschewing any semblance of plot and storytelling for graphic images of torture and obscene violence. Though most of the Dogme 95 Manifesto can be ignored and a great horror film still be produced, it’s the underlying goal of the collective that matters, and I can only hope that von Trier keeps this in mind when making his film.

Now to the meat of the article. Dr. Kim Paffenroth (of Gospel of the Living Dead and my new personal hero) sums up my thoughts on torture porn better than I ever could by stating, “that even if staged in the bloodiest way possible, the play’s (King Lear) effect would not rely on the scene; instead, the scene’s bloodiness would be justified by the overall power of the play.” All the violence, gore, and extreme sadism should be used not as the driving force of the film, but merely secondary to the plot yet still relevant. He cites other examples of uber-violent literature, such as Oedipus Rex, where the titular character, upon discovering that he killed his father and diddled his mother, gouges his own eyes out in graphic detail. To provide a more modern example, the French horror film Frontier(s), written and directed by Xavier Gans, can at first glance be included under the umbrella of torture porn, though it is distinct from these films in a number of ways. While incredibly violent and depicting graphic scenes of torture, its employment is relatively sparse when compared to its contemporaries, and instead focuses more on not only the struggle for survival by the female protagonist, but also the motives behind the twisted family holding her captive.

Eli Roth has tried to defend the excessive sadism of his films by attempting to draw parallels between their content and current events (Roth himself drew parallels between his own Hostel and the atrocities committed at Abu Ghraib). Attempting any sort of exegetical analysis of a woman having her eyeball drilled out by a hick American businessman seems like a bit of a stretch, Mr. Roth. I suppose if one tried really, really hard, they could form some sort of a connection between the psychological aspects of his film’s antagonists to the perpetrators of the events that occurred at Abu Ghraib, but it would be tenuous and open to severe interpretation.

Don Kaye of MSN Movies wrote a piece on torture porn (and actually references Ils, a film I feel doesn’t get the recognition it deserves), that apparently got under the skin of Eli Roth, who composed a rebuttal to Kaye which can be found here. He cites several examples of critics who praised Hostel II for it’s supposed anti-violence message, though I don’t see how graphic depictions of violence and torture, especially when it’s the driving force behind the movie, can be given a positive spin. In the end, however so much can be said regarding torture porn, but unfortunately for Eli Roth and others (Hostel helped to coin the term “torture porn,” so he often receives the brunt of the attacks) the negative usually outweighs the positive.

Reginald Williams at Blog Critics Magazine wrote a small piece on how “torture porn” is a misnomer, but unfortunately failed to do any real research to substantiate his incredibly narrow-minded claims. Breaking the term down into its two components, he of course agrees with the employment of the word torture, but balks at the liberal use of the word porn. The basis of his argument is that since there is no sexual stimulation or penetration in these horror films, then how could the term “porn” apply? Here’s where his research fails him. Though the etymology of the word has its roots in the sex business (from the Greek πορνογραφία), it has since evolved to encompass anything that might be considered obscene and containing no artistic merit, something that is obviously lost on Mr. Williams. Just as the sex and the potential for arousal gets people to view the porn we all know and love, it is the torture, violence and all manner of grotesqueries that entice people to watch the film, if only for that slight possibility of being frightened or disgusted. I mean, it certainly isn’t the supposed feminist undertones Eli Roth claims inhabit his films, though I guess I can see how a woman hanging nude over a bath tub and sliced apart by a scythe-wielding Elizabeth Bathory rip-off can be treated as a form of female empowerment.

Taking all of this into account, what ramifications do the popularity of these films have on the industry? Does it debase the genre as a whole, or does it simply serve to illuminate how fucked up people are in their desire and willingness to see pointless depictions of violence and torture? I’m not going to lie. I enjoyed Saw when it came out, just as I enjoyed Hostel when it came out. But over the past few years my taste in horror movies has matured, and looking back I can only compare them to a Michael Bay movie: good for two hours of escaping reality, but afterwards they’re forgotten and you go on with your life.

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I have not seen the first three films by Alexandre Aja, though I suspect most have not. His magnum opus might be considered Haute Tension had the script not degraded into a cheap M. Night Shayamalan rip-off, rendering the first half of the movie completely implausible and utterly stupid. Though this made the film absolutely unbearable, it was not without its upsides. The soundtrack, cinematography, and methods of dispatch, if you will, were absolutely brilliant, so I don’t think I’d be completely off base in saying that this was just a fluke and hoped for good things to come from him in the future.

His next film was a remake of the Craven borefest The Hills Have Eyes, which was overtly graphic for the sake of being graphic while being just as boring as the original. This says nothing of its originality, of which there is almost none, falling into an inescapable vortex of cheap horror cliches. The final twenty minutes are ridiculously predictable, and I left the theater wondering what the fuck I just watched.

His next film as a writer was P2, which I never saw. This is a good thing, as it doesn’t seem to be anything more than your run-of-the-mill Hollywood suspense-thriller. After that comes this year’s South Korean remake, Mirrors, doomed to fail because it’s a remake of an Asian horror film. Just because The Ring was successful does not give every fucking big-name horror director carte blanche to adapt every Asian horror film into a shitty one-off American adaptation. The Grudge sucked, Dark Water sucked,and Pulse definitely sucked, so what makes you think this won’t suck? ‘Cause Jack Bauer is in it?

Alexandre Aja is lucky in that he made one successful horror film (albeit a shitty successful horror film). Instead, however, of making more successful horror films that are actually good, he’s selling out by making cheap remakes of classics that also suck, remakes of Asian horror films that are rarely good, and really, really, really, really, really, really shitty retarded suspense-thrillers. His next movie is Piranha 3-D. Here’s hoping it’s a comedy.

Mr. Aja, please stop making shitty horror films. The French are dominating the genre, and you’re sticking out like a black man at a Klan rally. Have some God damned dignity and make something truly inspiring to horror fans everywhere. You’ve exhibited a slow and steady decline, so…well, so I guess you’re like most horror directors. Heh. No one can ever top their first.

Fun note: Aja holds membership in the Splat Pack, “a collection of filmmakers who, since 2002, have brought about a renaissance of horror film.” Of those on the list, the only who is worth a damn is Neil Marshall, ’cause, well, Dog Soldiers and The Descent fucking ruled.

Mr. Cardone,

I remember seeing an advertisement for your film, Wicked Little Things, over two years ago. It was one of the eight that make up the 8 Films to Die For in 2006, and despite the presence of a film starring Snoop Dogg, I was really looking forward to it. Your movie stood out the most, as I absolutely love zombie films, and the poster was just excellent. Little children are inherently creepy, and since this wasn’t a Japanese ghost story, I was beyond excited and thought the film was going to be absolutely incredible. In the end, though, I guess it was a good thing I couldn’t make it to any of the showings, because if I had to pay money for this film, I probably would have burnt down the fucking theater so no one would be subjected to that unmitigated pile of crap you call a movie.

Now, I’m a firm believer that any premise, no matter how ridiculous or cliched, can be made into a good horror film. Take for example Ils by David Moreau and Xavier Palud. They took a simple premise and produced a brilliant and tension-filled thriller. Now, take The Strangers by Brian Bertino as another example. Same basic premise, yet it’s the only film other than yours that makes Batman & Robin seem like a good movie. Horror is a delicate genre. It’s the most often criticized of all the genres, and it’s incredibly rare to see one actually make money based on its merits and not a good marketing campaign. If it does not attain a certain level of respectability, be it through a good story, a stellar soundtrack, or Hell, even mindless gore, then it has failed. Yours actually made it to theaters, and for that I commend you. But you failed to put the passion every horror fan has into your film, and instead made nothing more than an excuse to lower the bar for what’s acceptable in the genre today.

What could have made your film better? Other than a complete rewrite of the script? How about believable dialogue? Did you really think “You’re shittin’ me? Up with the fucking zombies?” was acceptable? Yes, I know you didn’t write the film, but as director and producer, I assumed you would have some sort of creative control. Or was this more of a 9-5 type gig for you? ‘Cut and print! I have to be home to sacrifice a cat to the devil for all this TALENT!’ How about a real score? Or decent teen actors? Oh, I know. How about something OTHER than the most hackneyed and done-to-death motive behind the zombies’ absolutely humorous thirst for flesh? If I recall correctly, there was a scene where they were eating a cow. A cow. So I guess not only do they want revenge, but they want a tasty burger.

Your movie has made me question my faith in a higher power, as no deity can exist who is so merciless that he would allow something this bad to be made. I can only hope the money you make writing, directing and producing direct to DVD films and low-budget monstrosities is enough to take your mind off the fact that you have no soul. Please, for the sake of the genre, for yourself, and for the good of mankind, stop making movies.

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