quote:

---

The film begins with a well-to-do family — Georg, his wife Anna, his son Schorschi and their dog — arriving at their lake house. Their next-door neighbour pops in to visit, accompanied with two young men, Peter and Paul, whom he introduces as friends. The two men begin imposing themselves on the family's courtesy, and in the process destroy their phone and ruin all their eggs. Eventually a frustrated Anna demands that the men leave, asking Georg to eject them from the premises. Paul breaks Georg's leg with his own golf club and the two men take the family hostage. They force the family to participate in a number of sadistic games in order to stay alive. Throughout the film, it is implied that the intelligent, amoral Paul is the leader of the pair, while the slow-witted, weak-willed Peter is merely doing what he's told.

Paul asks if the family wants to bet that they will be alive by 9 o'clock in the morning, though he doubts that they will win. Between playing their games, the two men keep up a constant patter, and Paul frequently ridicules Peter's weight and lack of intelligence. He describes a number of contradicting stories of Peter's past, though no conclusion is ever reached as to the men's origins or motives. When some of the family's other neighbours arrive for a visit, Anna passes the men off as friends until the visitors leave. Schorschi eventually escapes to the house next door, but finds the family dead. He attempts to shoot Paul with a rifle, but the gun fails to go off. Paul returns him to the house, along with the gun. After a few more games, the men play a counting-out game between the family members and select Schorschi. They shoot him and leave.

Georg and Anna weep for their loss, but eventually resolve to survive. Anna flees the house while Georg, with a broken leg, tries to get help with the malfunctioning phone. Anna struggles to find help, but eventually Peter and Paul reappear, capture her, and return to the house. They kill Georg and take Anna out on the family's boat. Around eight o'clock, they casually throw the bound Anna into the water to drown, thus winning the bet. They dock at the house of the neighbours that had previously visited the family, and request some eggs, thereby restarting their cycle of murder.

---

What is the point of making people go through such an experience?

[ March 14, 2008, 09:38 PM: Message edited by: the_Somalian ]
 

---

Posted by Zhil (Member # 10504) on :
 
That is pornography for psychopaths. Like most porn, there is no point beyond that some people enjoy watching them.
 

---

Posted by 0Megabyte (Member # 8624) on :
 
Sounds like part of the newish genre of nihilistic death-porn films which show a feeling of hopelessness and pointlessness.

That's the whole point, you see, is the pointlessness of it all, and the unending, undeserved, unrelenting despair.

It's why these sorts of movies are both offensively antithetical to what a story is supposed to be (which I'd imagine is part of the point of the endeavor), as well as impossible to make into something you could call good.

Yes, there are series, and stories, where everyone dies, and the heroes lose utterly, that are in fact still good movies, still a good story.

But this whole genre of meaninglessness... well, has no meaning.

Night of the Living Dead, for example, ends with all the main characters dying. But they die due to their own failures, their own faults, their own mistakes, and while they do not learn anything from the story, we, the audience, do.

This story you describe has nothing like this, from the synopsis. It's set from the beginning. There's nothing they can do, the bad guys are omnipotent, there's no chance from the beginning.

It's like a two hour movie of someone falling off of a building. The outcome is set, and all that happens is waiting for the inevitable. That's not worthwhile. Why watch such a thing?

There are stories that end in tragedy that can be great. This is not the sort. It sickens me, this and other movies of its kind, and even the recent torture porn flicks that don't end with everybody dying. They make me feel ill.

I wonder. Why has everyone forgotten how to make a good horror film? Hitchcock understood it. There are definitely people today who get it. Why do so many fail to?
 

---

Posted by Corwin (Member # 5705) on :
 
Ugh, that is one sick movie! I don't know what the point is though... I kind of felt the same way about "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and "Match Point". They didn't seem as pointlessly sick as this one, but they weren't far from that. Still, a lot of people liked them... :shrug:
 

---

Posted by TL (Member # 8124) on :
 
No one is "making" anyone sit through the experience. If you're not interested, don't buy the ticket. Beyond that, calling a film sick and meaningless without having seen it is not the activity of reasonable folks. I'm not defending this particular film, as I haven't seen it.

At the same time, I see no reason to get worked up about it either. For all any of us know, it oculd be a film with a great deal of merit.


 

---

Posted by Corwin (Member # 5705) on :
 
Eh, we judge movies on other people's reviews all the time. That and the trailers are how I get to chose which movies I go to. If what was in this particular review is true, there's very probably nothing that could redeem this movie in my eyes anyway. So take it as a comment on the review if not on the movie itself. Oh, and I posted in here mainly to write about the other two movies, both of which I actually saw. In both I was hoping until the end that they'd turn into something more interesting, but they kept on going in the same direction. At least now I'll know to avoid movies resembling any of the three.
 

---

Posted by Zhil (Member # 10504) on :
 
It's merely extrapolation of past experiences and a good knowledge of how much crap "those" movies are. After watching Saw, I can safely say that Saw 2 to Saw 4 were crap, even if I didn't watch them.

In much the same way, after reading that synopsis, I can safely say that this movie will probably be meaningless as well.

Regarding the_Somalian's question, "What is the point of making people go through such an experience?", I don't think he meant that the makers of the film were forcing anyone to watch anything. I intrepreted his question to mean more like, "What did the director mean for making this movie? What's the point, moral, propoganda, story, emotion, etc he wanted to convey to the audience?" with a cynical, sarcastic tone.
 

---

Posted by TL (Member # 8124) on :
 
You'll never know what the filmmaker was trying to convey if you don't watch the movie. And that's okay, but blasting it without having seen it isn't.

Also, pretty unfair to label people "psychopaths" based on what style of films they like.

I could sit here all day long naming excellent films that could be made to sound dreadful and sick based on a three or four paragraph synopsis.

I happen to be a guy who subscribes to Cemetary Dance magazine, reads Stephen King and Richard Laymon, watches scary movies, and writes horror stories. I'm hip-deep in trying to create a horror novel right now.

Am I a psychopath?

Get real. If you haven't seen the movie, you have absolutely no basis upon which to rail against it.

Just because you've seen Saw and Hostel doesn't make you fit to judge everything that comes down the pike. Those films were wretched. This one might be or might not be. You don't know.
 

---

Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
 

quote:

---

If you haven't seen the movie, you have absolutely no basis upon which to rail against it.

---

quote:

---

A summary is plenty of basis to rail against something.

---

quote:

---

Regarding everything else, especially about judging entertainment I haven't seen, but can make good extrapolations about, I'm going to have to stand by. There are so many movies I purposely haven't seen, and people have said, "Good. It sucked." which just adds to my ambivalence towards movies like that. Hell, I didn't watch Passion of the Christ, even when people raved about it because I thought it would turn out to be torure porn... and from what reviews I happened to glance at, I was right.

---

See, me, I'm not willing to call something like Passion of the Christ "torture porn" based on a say-so. I might be willing to say, Passion looks like it might be torture porn (it's not, of course), therefore I don't think I'd enjoy it, and therefore I won't watch it. Sure, that's a reasonable position. I think it would be unreasonable for me to say Passion is definitely torture porn, and is a film which is enjoyed mainly by psychopaths, and has no artistic merit, and what is wrong with Mel Gibson, how could he do this, and it is meaningless and has no merit, etc etc, based on a passing glance at a few reviews.

"Not for me", "I'm not interested" "Doesn't look good" -- these are all perfectly fine things to say about a film you haven't seen.

That's just my take. I'll kindly step out of the thread now so we don't start going in circles.
 

---

Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
 
The two most disturbing movies I've ever seen were "The Hitcher" and "Se7en". Both of them left a really bad taste in my mouth. I thought they were evil. I wouldn't want to meet the people who made them in a dark alley. Or at all.
 

---

Posted by anti_maven (Member # 9789) on :
 
Thanks the_Somalian for the summary of the film. I will now not be tempted to go and see it, even if wild horses should be dragging me to the cinema.

You have done you good deed for today.

As for why folks make this type of film, well I suppose the answer has to be "because they can". Someone somewhere liked the premise sufficiently to green-light the funding.

Personally I don't like this sort of thing. I like to at least feel some sympathy for the protagonists. If it's clear from the outset that nobody survives, I can't connect to the characters, and it's a waste of time for me (unless the reasons *why* they don't survive are so complelling that it overrides the happy ending factor).

If the film is just a spiral into doom I would rather be elsewhere.
 

---

Posted by Zhil (Member # 10504) on :
 
I see what you're saying now.

I'll step out too. I don't think I want to debate something that I clearly have little to no credible knowledge over, seeing as how I watch very little of that kind of film. My first reply was off-the-cuff with a good portion of faux pas, and the rest was an attempt to defend why I didn't see a lot of those movies-- but that wasn't the original poster's intent, nor was it why you were getting angry, correct? I was making definitive, factual statements based on opinion, and I can understand why that would be unreasonable. Those are my perceptions of those films, and may not be fact: others who have watched more of them are better equipped than I to judge their merits.

So I'm out.

Peace.

[edit: err, reply to TL]
 

---

Posted by TL (Member # 8124) on :
 

quote:

---

why you were getting angry, correct?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by anti_maven:
...
As for why folks make this type of film, well I suppose the answer has to be "because they can". Someone somewhere liked the premise sufficiently to green-light the funding.
...

---

quote:

---

Night of the Living Dead, for example, ends with all the main characters dying. But they die due to their own failures, their own faults, their own mistakes

---

quote:

---

This story you describe has nothing like this, from the synopsis. It's set from the beginning. There's nothing they can do, the bad guys are omnipotent, there's no chance from the beginning.

---

How is this set from the beginning? There's plenty of different ways the movie could have gone. For example, when the husband escapes and finds a gun next door, he could have come back, shot the tormentors, and rescued his wife for a typical hollywood happy ending.

--Enigmatic
 

---

Posted by Avadaru (Member # 3026) on :
 
How about a spoiler warning? I happen to like movies of this "genre", and probably would have been interested in seeing this movie, but now I know how it ends.
 

---

Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
 
I think there's a difference between what's called torture-porn and horror flicks (or even, in the case of Tarantino films, comedies).

I like (for the most part) horror movies and even books, especially Stephen King's.

Part of it, possible, are the suspense elements, the something of not showing the horrific and graphic elements of the physical harm as they happen. The mind, as they say, conjures up more frightening things than what can be shown either in stories or movies. Psychological torture can be much more deep—such as the psychological elements in movies like Se7en (which is a movie I like). While those psychological elements are present in movies like Saw, I, personally, can't watch them. The physicality of the torture is just too much to handle, almost overdone, replacing the psychological torture the characters go through. When one of the characters has to make the choice of breaking/cutting off his own foot in order to escape, that's some serious psychological torture. For me, I don't need to see him actually doing that. Perhaps some people do, almost as a compliment to the psychological element.

There is also a difference between movies that use intermittent scenes of graphic bodily harm (The Passion of the Christ, Se7en) compared to movies that are a succession of scenes of graphic bodily harm (The Saw movies, Hostel). The movies comprised of a constant barrage of the outright illustration of the physical elements of torture seem to suffer from a dilution of the overarching plot and characterization.

In the movie (and story) Misery, the only scene of graphic physical harm is the hobbling scene. Even then, the movie goes from the start of her swing of the sledgehammer to the author's face and the horrible, awful sound of bones cracking. In the movies with the even more graphic physical harm, we would have witnessed the sledgehammer hitting the ankles, the ankles breaking, the bones sticking out, and then the reactions of the swinger and the author. In the written story, the readers supply all of the visuals (and sounds) of that scene.

Another example is found at the end Se7en (it's an older movie, so I'll spoil it). This part is where the antagonist has a box delivered to the protagonist. Through what the antagonist is saying to the protagonist, we come to the horrible conclusion that the box contains his wife's head. Through the expression on the antagonist's face, we know that he's having the same horrific thought. And he's faced with a decision—open the box or not. It isn't exactly the physical presence of the head in the box being the most horrifying aspect of this scene. It's the idea of the antagonist having taken the most precious thing from the protagonist's life, and then forcing him to confront that his wife has died in an awful way because of this game the antagonist has played with him the entire movie. To open the box and reveal his action will please the antagonist, which the protagonist doesn't want to do. However, the protagonist (as do we, the audience) has to know.

Basically, what was previously left to the mind of the viewer to fill in has been filled in for them by the movies with the constant graphic physical harm. Whereas when it's left to the viewer to fill in, we can tone it down in our imaginations. But when the movies fill it in for us, we don't have a choice in how truly graphic or less graphic it will be. Our internal damper is removed from the film-viewer interaction.

However, there are movies which depict the harm just as graphically as those in the Saw-type genre. Tarantino films, particularly Pulp Fiction, are an example of this. But these films, at least to this viewer, have scenes offset by something else within the scene that somehow softens the impact of the visual blow. One scene that comes to mind is the conversation in the car between the two protagonists, and in the middle of that conversation, they accidentally shoot the passenger in the back of the car in the head. Yet the conversation itself, while referring to the shooting (which is shown onscreen) continues comedically, and somehow the graphic harm isn't quite so bad, so to speak. Other films I can think of that are like that are Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and The Boondock Saints.

In movies like Saw, there's nothing between you and the graphic harm to soften it. You get its full impact straight-on. There's no separation the psychological and the physical. Instead, it's all there and all together and it's going to hit you all at once. For some (perhaps many) people, they can't take this sort of all-out assault, while others have the ability to take it in as a whole.

I do admit a bias against films like the Saw movies or Hostel, or even films with distinct psychological humiliation. I can't physically watch them. So all of my thoughts could be wrong (or I may have mis-remembered some of the details of other movies, like Misery, I had to look away and cover my ears during the hobbling scene).

Anyway, take it for what you will. While I don't like the constantly graphic films, I do recognize them as another genre of storytelling. To each his own, I guess.
 

---

Posted by Alcon (Member # 6645) on :
 
The main issue I have with this sorta torture porn film is that the whole point of porn is the vicarious experience.

In a film where there is little or no story or plot or where the story or plot is clearly very thin and simply there to hold up the action, you can't label it as anything but porn. And the point of porn is to vicariously experience the action in question. For regular porn the question of why people enjoy it is obvious: everyone likes sex. It makes sense that people would want to vicariously experience sex.

For action porn the vicarious experience is all the ridiculously heroic/impossible feats of physical skill. The car chases, the fights, the impossible jumps, falls or shots taken. Again should be fairly obvious why some people wish to vicariously experience that.

But torture porn? Why in hell, heaven or Earth would anyone wish to vicariously experience that?
 

---

Posted by erosomniac (Member # 6834) on :
 
Why the hell is there no spoiler warning on this thread?
 

---

Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
 
Interesting. If you look at classic drama, the intent was to inspire fear and pity. There was also an element of nobility about it - the characters were kings, the stories had a sort of grandeur about them. Later, Roman drama was less "high-toned" and, as the empire degenerated, this desire for catharsis was achieved more crudely by gladiators and executions.

Interesting to me how we, as a culture, seek more and more graphic stimuli to fill that need to experience pity and fear. And when does that pity and fear turn to other responses?
 

---

Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 

quote:

---

Why the hell is there no spoiler warning on this thread?

---

quote:

---

But torture porn? Why in hell, heaven or Earth would anyone wish to vicariously experience that?

---

I find "torture porn" movies extremely exhilarating. I don't know if it's the adrenaline rush or the subconscious internal panic I have when I watch these movies and imagine myself in a similar situation - it's a thrill for me. Maybe a lot of people don't see it that way. I love to put myself in the position of the victim in torture movies, and imagine the ways in which I could escape. Also, I don't know if you could consider these two topics related, but I'm an avid BDSM practicer, and to me, pain is a huge turn-on. I am in no way saying that in a real-life situation that watching someone being gruesomely tortured would turn me on, but in movies, I like it.
 

---

Posted by erosomniac (Member # 6834) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dagonee:

quote:

---

Why the hell is there no spoiler warning on this thread?

---

Which part of "Here's the summary for a new film" didn't warn you that spoilers were there in the quote?

---

quote:

---

Also, I don't know if you could consider these two topics related, but I'm an avid BDSM practicer, and to me, pain is a huge turn-on.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by TL:

quote:

---

A summary is plenty of basis to rail against something.

---

It's certainly a resonable basis to use to decide whether or not you want to see the movie. It's hardly a basis to go on a crusade.

---

quote:

---

If you were shown a torture porn movie -- one you hadn't seen -- and a movie of a person being really tortured, are you confident you'd be able to tell the difference? What if you were shown a movie of someone being really tortured and were told it was fake? Later it's revealed it was real, and you enjoyed watching it. How do you feel?

---

quote:

---

Do we throw the balance out of whack by exposure?

---

quote:

---

In the movie (and story) Misery, the only scene of graphic physical harm is the hobbling scene. Even then, the movie goes from the start of her swing of the sledgehammer to the author's face and the horrible, awful sound of bones cracking.

---

quote:

---

Part of it, possible, are the suspense elements, the something of not showing the horrific and graphic elements of the physical harm as they happen. The mind, as they say, conjures up more frightening things than what can be shown either in stories or movies.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Synesthesia:
I do not want to see things like this. Life is miserable enough as it is without watching people be tortured and tormented for hours.
I don't even like it in movies I like such as Terminator 1 and 2 where random people get shot for no reason at all.
Urg, i'd rather watch a ton of nude, nekkid sweaty sex scenes than watch people get killed.

---

I totally agree with this. Of course, with a 1 year old baby that watches the majority of what I watch (she doesn't go to bed until 10pm), my viewing habbits have changed drastically so I don't watch much with violence or sex. Strangely, watching significantly less tv and movies, I haven't really felt that much loss in my life.
 

---

Posted by SteveRogers (Member # 7130) on :
 
I thought I would just point out that the original movie, which was made over 10 years ago before most current trends in cinema, is listed in the book 1001 Movies to See Before You Die due to its merit as dark, psychological horror film. And, also, that the remake has been getting mostly positive reviews. Example: IGN gave the film 5 out of 5 stars.
 

---

Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
 
Re: Misery— I did say that the details were fuzzy.
 

---

Posted by Puffy Treat (Member # 7210) on :
 
My problem is: In a film where the bad guys control every aspect of reality and have no way to lose, how can the audience possibly invest emotion? There's no suspense. No reason to care.
 

---

Posted by Enigmatic (Member # 7785) on :
 
Puffy, what makes you say the bad guys have no way to lose? Don't the vast majority of suspence and action movies set up some seemingly impossible situation to overcome and then have the protagonists find some way to overcome it? Unless the audience has read a total plot summary like the one that started this thread, or seen the original, they have no reason to conclude that the bad guys have no way to lose.

I asked the same question when Megabyte said it was "set from the beginning." Bull. Two guys try to hold a family hostage, hurt them, screw with their heads, and say they're going to kill them. Gosh, they must be invincible! Do people watch the first 20 minutes of Die Hard and say "Well, there's no point in watching this. The bad guys are totally in control and Bruce Willis doesn't even have a gun!"

--Enigmatic
 

---

Posted by Snail (Member # 9958) on :
 
I haven't seen Funny Games, either the original or this new version, but I've read about the original film and also read interviews of the director. Basically, the original film (of which the new one is supposed to be a shot-for-shot remake) is meant as a critique of American movies and Hollywood film violence. The killers have an ongoing debate with one another about the line between fiction and reality, and one of them acts as if he knows he's in a movie (the one who thinks fiction does matter), talking to the camera and stuff like that, whereas the other doesn't show any such awareness (the one who thinks fiction doesn't). They also refer to each other as Tom and Jerry. Also, the violence isn't really shown on camera, for example when the husband is attacked the camera follows the wife's horror as she is watching him being attacked.

Some critics like this, others have argued that despite the social commentary in the end the director still gets the viewers so involved with the characters as opposed to the consequences of violence that in the end the movie works just as regular torture porn.

Edited to add: Here's a positive review of the new film that also discusses some of the messages.

[ March 15, 2008, 01:41 PM: Message edited by: Snail ]
 

---

Posted by Puffy Treat (Member # 7210) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Enigmatic:
Puffy, what makes you say the bad guys have no way to lose?

---

quote:

---

The film frequently blurs the line between fiction and reality, especially highlighting the act of observation. The character Paul breaks the fourth wall throughout the movie and addresses the camera in various ways. As he directs Anna to look for her dead dog, he turns, winks, and smirks at the camera. When he asks the family to bet on their survival, he turns to the camera and asks the audience whether they will bet as well. At the end of the film, when requesting eggs from the next family, he looks into the camera and smirks again. Only Paul shows awareness that the film is being observed by the audience.

Paul also frequently states his intentions to follow the standards of movie plot development. When he asks the audience to bet, he guesses that the audience wants the family to win. After the killers vanish in the third act, Paul later explains that he had to give the victims a last chance to escape or else it would not be dramatic. Toward the end of the movie, he refuses to kill the rest of the family because the movie has not yet reached feature length. Throughout the film, Paul shows awareness of the audience's expectations.

However, Paul also causes the film to go against convention on a number of occasions. In thriller movies, one sympathetic character usually survives, but here all three family members die. When Anna successfully shoots Peter, as a possible start to a heroic escape for the family, Paul uses a remote control to rewind the film itself and prevent her action. After Schorschi dies, Paul regrets killing him first because it goes against convention and limits the suspense for the rest of the film. At the end of the film, the murderers prevent Anna from using a knife in the boat to cut her bonds. An earlier close-up had pointed out the knife's location as a possible set-up for a final-act escape, but this becomes a red herring. At the end of the film, Paul again smirks triumphantly at the audience. As a self-aware character, he is able to go against the viewers' wishes and make himself the winner of the film.

After killing Anna, Peter and Paul argue about the line between reality and fiction. Paul believes that a fiction that is observed is just as real as anything else, but Peter dismisses this idea. Unlike Paul, Peter never shows an awareness that he is in a film.

---

quote:

---

"Anyone who leaves the cinema doesn't need the film, and anybody who stays does."

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Snail:
For another single review, here's a great (negative) one from Roger Ebert's site. (The actual review is not written by Ebert, though, but his editor.) It contains the following quote by the director:

quote:

---

"Anyone who leaves the cinema doesn't need the film, and anybody who stays does."

---

Personally I just have a hard time seeing how a film like this could possibly work. How can violent entertainment criticize violent entertainment? I mean, it's like why there can't be an anti-war war movie: because any war film will by definition make the actual war scenes seem exciting on a visceral level no matter what other political messages the film might harbour.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Reshpeckobiggle:
Magnolia wasn't depressing...

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by ricree101:
... And somehow it has a 3.5 user rating. Makes you wonder what is up with some of the people on that site.

---

Well, since its a user poll, I suspect that the users that voted gave it a high rating

But seriously, even the RottenTomatoes metascore is split 44:51.
 

---

Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
 
Meanwhile, here's Chris Bellamy's review from IGMS, where he gave it a 4 out of 4:

IGMS

quote:

---

One of the fundamental issues I have with the way some people have perceived Funny Games is the insisting on lumping it in with the "torture porn" films like the Saw and Hostel franchises. Such comparisons are absurd - are, in fact, completely missing the point. A film like Hostel and a film like Funny Games are polar opposites. Their intentions and strategies for their intended responses are completely at odds.

The most important thing to note about Funny Games is that virtually all of the violence takes place off-screen...

It's more emotional than physical, but when it does become physical, we don't ever actually get to see the violence being committed against them. Contrast that with, for instance, Saw, where the entire point is to see just how gruesomely the filmmakers can kill people, and just how much you will enjoy it. "Torture porn" (already a tired phrase, I'm aware) is capitalizing on our ability to be grossed out and horrified yet simultaneously amused and, worse yet, involved in the carnage we're so gleefully egging on.

---

quote:

---

The problem with movies like the one mentioned in the OP is that the whole point of them is to deliver a thrill by portraying the torture and murder of of others. The fact that it is fiction is meaningless. Being able to distance oneself from the act and seeing it as nothing more than entertainment, rather than the human horror that it really is, is disturbing in itself, let alone the ugliness of the movie.

---

quote:

---

Lots and lots of cussing

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Reshpeckobiggle:
Camus, I've heard that argument before, about pornography (violence and gore included) being an outlet, and it never sat well with me. If you need an outlet for those things and for some reason you don't have one, would you have to go out and do those things yourself? If so, then there is something wrong with you. And just because you have an outlet, there's still something wrong with you. I doubt having an outlet for those things helps anyone cope with some sick urges; I find it just as likely that they exacerbate the problem.

---

quote:

---

Well, couldn't an argument be made that movies like this provide a socially acceptable outlet for the release of certain emotions, instead of merely repressing those emotions? I think an example might be with the case of pornography. People might watch and even enjoy watching certain things that they would never actually do themselves.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Javert:

quote:

---

Lots and lots of cussing

---

Why is this depressing? Granted, I haven't seen the movie. But cussing has never struck me as depressing, and under the right circumstances can be positively life-affirming.

---

It's not necessarily depressing, but there was too much in this movie to the point of total aggression.
Do people really use the F word that much?
 

---

Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
 
"Do people really use the F word that much?"

It's all "Frodo this", and "Frodo that".
 

---

Posted by Reshpeckobiggle (Member # 8947) on :
 
re: There Will Be Blood... that's a good take. For me, here was an example of a film that, if it were lacking any other redeeming qualities, would be worth watching simply for Lewis' performance.

The baptism scene was haunting to me. Here, from one second to the next, I was laughing, feeling bad for laughing, and then nearly destroyed by "I abandoned my boy!" and then right back to awkwardly laughing again: "Just give me blood Lord, and let me get out of here." One of the most powerful scenes I've ever seen.
 

---

Posted by camus (Member # 8052) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by The Reader:
I've heard that before and I think there is merit, but someone with those emotions and desires should seek treatment or couseling. Also, I think that maybe there is to much being made of this. People who like these movies most likely aren't disturbed, and are just getting a cheap thrill.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by camus:

quote:

---

Originally posted by The Reader:
I've heard that before and I think there is merit, but someone with those emotions and desires should seek treatment or couseling. Also, I think that maybe there is to much being made of this. People who like these movies most likely aren't disturbed, and are just getting a cheap thrill.

---

Well, I specifically left out the desires and was speaking strictly about emotions, because I think the two are very different areas in this regard.

Regarding the idea of things providing an outlet for emotions, I'm undecided about it myself. I really haven't seen any completely convincing arguments either for or against it.

I agree completely that the generalization that people that watch these types of movies must themselves be disturbed is an unfair one.

---