A lot of people like to throw around the phrase “torture porn” to describe particularly violent horror flicks. In fact, my recent piece on the greatest horror films of all time features more than a few movies that certain people would categorize as such. They do this often without knowing where the term came from or even what it really means. With Halloween upon us, now is really as good a time as any to delve back into this debate that seems to happen every so often within the industry and in the media as well. I have an issue with the term, and the very idea of it as well. I feel that it ghettoizes plenty of worthy horror movies into an unsavory category that they don’t belong in. Honestly, I’ve yet to find a film that compelled me to label it “torture porn”, though I’ll admit that once or twice I’ve come somewhat close to it. I know I’m in the minority here, but I just don’t like when things are unfairly lumped together. It’s just lazy on the part of film critics and audience members, and doesn’t acknowledge that these filmmakers have a particular intent when making their films, not just to get nutjobs to get off on murder. Plus, the phrase itself doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Before we go any further, however, we need to understand what I mean by “torture porn”.
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