[This continues our coverage of NY Comic-Con 2009]
The middle child of Warner Brothers’ Comic-Con screening family was some footage for the upcoming remake of Friday the 13th. Honestly, I haven’t even seen the original, and I had next to zero interest in this film. After watching the preview footage, if it were possible to have a negative amount of interest in it, I certainly do. Wrather and I were subject to about 6 minutes of incredibly graphic violence, including a bear trap around the leg (with a lot of raw flesh), a woman burning inside a sleeping bag, machetes through the leg, machetes through the head, and other things that I missed because I literally couldn’t watch.
Now, just to be clear, I do watch horror movies every once in a while, but usually the campy variety (Shaun of the Dead, Army of Darkness, etc.) I have not seen any of the Saw movies, and I have absolutely no intention to. Call me squeamish, but this level of violence and gore has no appeal to me, and I struggle to see how it appeals to others. To Each His/Her Own, I guess, but this stuff was just brutal by any definition of the word.
There was one notable moment in the Q&A: someone basically asked why we need yet another movie where Jason kills a bunch of teenagers in the woods. In other words, he thought this was a stupid remake that no one needed. The filmmakers’ response was essentially: no one is saying we “need” this; we’re doing it because we want to. Some portion of the audience loudly cheered this response, but I have the feeling that the majority of the audience was of the former opinion.
Other writers/readers: are you excited about this, or other ultra-violent horror movies coming up? I won’t judge you. I just won’t go with you to see it.
I try watching horror movies because… well… I’m not sure. I just, uh, do. If it’s on, I’ll watch. Or if my dad and I want something to do together, if it isn’t play Resident Evil, it’s watch a horror movie we select randomly at the video store. So I guess I’d see it if it was on cable, but I wouldn’t spend the $$ to see it in the theaters. I *am* interested in seeing “The Unborn,” even though it has some bad reviews, but only because it has Gary Oldman in it and I absolutely love him.
But Lee, is it the blood? For lo, you like zombie games. Not to call you a hypocrite. Is it the difference in media?
Gab: yes, part of it is the medium. Violence in video games is still abstract enough to pass as fantasy in my mind. When I see a live-action bear claw digging through a live-action guy’s flesh, exposing muscle and bone, that gets too real for me.
There’s obvious a spectrum of visual depictions of physical violence. On one end is something like Looney Toons. In the middle is something like a standard first person shooter or Arnold/Stallone action movie. At the other end is something like Saw or this remake of Friday the 13th. People have different upper limits that fall at different places along that spectrum. Mine happens to be somewhere in between the middle and the end point.
My sentiments echo the audience member who asked the question: I have an admittedly high-brow philosophy when it comes to judging films, and from this standpoint this torture-porn fetish the horror film genre has begun to espouse feels more and more like a cheap attempt to “push the envelope,” to put it banally.
I mean, I still consider film to be an art, and granted, these types of movies are intended to be brain-numbing, rat-in-a-cage lever pulls. But still. Like the question asks: Why is this needed? What does this film do any differently than something like Saw or Hostel or the Halloween reboot? What does it say that makes it stand apart. If the answer is a flat, toneless “nothing, but Jason Voorhees is cool,” then I don’t see a reason for something like this to be made.