I saw an advanced screening of a film last night I’m not allowed to talk about. It’s a sequel to a small and bloody horror film that used the Texas Chainsaw Massacre/don’t actually show the violence editing to trick the audience into seeing stuff that wasn’t there. I thought the original was decent for a low budget slasher-esque offering, but nothing to brag about.
What the sequel does is amp up the violence to an absurd level for maximum audience reaction. There’s no hiding from the blood and attacks in this one. The violence is the currency of the film. Yet, with all the bloodshed and literal piles of bodies, the filmmakers only tipped their hand to gratuitous nonsense with a writhing T&A party scene.
One thing I mention a lot when discussing the horror genre is justifying content. Nothing turns me off faster than gratuitous violence. Gratuitous sexual content is up there, too, but those movies typically cross the gore threshold long before the random nudity pops up. I’m not a prude, either. It’s not the violence that turns me off, but its use.
The concept of justifying content in a horror movie may seem odd. What I mean is doing something with the story to explain why we will see what we are going to see. No, just saying “a serial killer is on the loose” doesn’t justify some of the more sensationalist violence in horror. You need to have context that explains just what, exactly, is going to happen and why.
A perfect example of this is Psycho. Alfred Hitchcock crafted a shocking story that justifies its unexpected dark twists from the first scene. For example, you think that your main character, the survivor girl, is going to be Marion Crane. She’s blonde, she’s attractive, and she’s the first big player introduced in a Hitchcock film. However, because she committed a big crime–grand larceny–she is punished. She is sentenced to death at the Bates Motel for being a bad woman.
And what of Norman Bates, the momma’s boy turned drag queen murderer? When we first meet him, he’s the quiet and awkward hotel manager. How does Hitchcock justify the violence he will commit and the excellent reveal at the end? Simple. Context.
Aside from the shower scene and the big reveal, I think the most unnerving scene in Psycho is the taxidermy lounge discussion. It starts with Norman explaining to Marion that he personally stuffed all the animals in his collection. Taxidermy does not necessarily demonstrate evil intents, but it does create a lead in for the reveal of what happened to his mother at the end.
It goes further than that. Norman’s enthusiasm for his collection of dead creatures is unnerving. He goes beyond hobby status to obsession. That’s before he even discusses his relationship with her mother and how “we all go a little mad sometimes.” Marion is put on edge, but she considers the kind looking man in front of her safe enough.
Without the context of Norman’s interests and relationship with his mother, the reveal of Norman dressing up as his mother and committing murder wouldn’t make sense. The same goes for Marion’s fate. If she was just a secretary traveling through, her murder would be gratuitous. Instead, the heightened moral code of horror films provides the framework for ending her life.
Imagine starving a handicapped woman and tying her to a bed without any context. Wouldn't fly.
As chilling as Halloween is for its random targets and unexplored motivation, John Carpenter put in just enough context to explain why there is a masked serial killer wandering around a quiet town. Though Michael Myers’ motivations do not go beyond the horror code of morality (immorality must be punished swiftly), the opening scene where little Michael kills his teenage sister with a knife establishes the context for the rest of the film.
We learn the motivation context for Michael Myers in the first scene of Halloween.
The rest of the film falls in line with those two scenes. Michael chooses a victim who does something naughty. He stalks them. He kills them. Only the pure are saved in a stark morality play with no other overriding message.
When I hear or read about the Saw series being some sort of torture fantasy designed to thrill gore hounds, I get annoyed. The first film does not do this at all. It quickly establishes a context that justifies the violence that is mostly implied. Is there blood? Yes. Is it gratuitous? Not in the first one.
Saw sets up a dark and simple motive. The Jigsaw killer targets people he believes are wasting their lives. A drug addict, a slothful man, even an PI photographer are viewed as wasteful people. The only way they can survive is to prove their desire to live in somewhat ironic traps. The gore is implied through fast edits and surprisingly strong acting for an indie horror film.
The second entry uses the context of the first to justify the early stages of a more graphic story. The cops discuss the murders before the game begins. You know, as soon as the tape is played, that Jigsaw is around and playing another game. Within twenty minutes, you find out that everyone trapped in Jigsaw’s latest game is a criminal who hurt someone else for their own benefit.
Drug dealers, gang members, addicts, pyromaniacs, and physical assailants are given individually designed traps to solve in order to earn their freedom. If they follow the rules, they can all survive. These rules involve cooperating with each other to gain more resources. Once their crimes are established, you realize very quickly that these people lack any empathy or sense of duty to a greater society. There’s a good reason they were picked for the game.
Third time is not the charm for appropriate context in the Saw series.
Saw III is the least watchable for me because of this. I know why, from the other films, a grieving father was forced to confront people that caused his son’s murderer to go free. I don’t know why, in the context of the film, anyone exists in the Saw universe beyond the killer, his assistant, and the cops investigating the murders.
The context issue extends beyond horror into all storytelling. It’s just that horror has a bad track record with following through. You can never assume that people have seen another movie to understand your use of violence. You really can’t assume that anyone who wants to see a horror film just wants blood and guts on the screen. Are there fans who watch horror for that? Yes. Are they the majority? I can only hope not.
Without context to explain why things happen the way they happen, a film has failed to effectively tell its story. That advanced screening film I saw last night did an excellent job of this. There is literally a five minute opening credit sequence that reestablishes the context of the original film for anyone who hasn’t seen it. The major players are reintroduced. The motive of the villain and the location are further explored. Within 15 minutes, everyone in the theater was an expert on this particular series. If more horror filmmakers cared this much about the needs of the audience, people like me wouldn’t find it necessary to justify why we like them so much. The easiest answer to the problem is context and it’s maddening to see how few horror filmmakers even try to use it.
Thoughts? Love to hear them.
