I was never really into Disney movies (except for one, but there's only so much I can say about my boy Hercules), so in the spirit of Halloween we're just going to talk about murder. The sixth installment of the now-infamous Saw series opens in theaters today to the excitement of sickos everywhere. Many would categorize these films as senseless violence. Unnecessary gore. "Torture porn", of a sort. And I would tend to agree. But there's an underlying intelligence and maneuverability that makes these movies much more than simple horror.
We've already discussed the typical formula for the genre: humans fight the supernatural "other" and end up winning when they realize that ideologies function much more appropriately than science. But viewers can only take so much of this formula until they get bored, which is why it seems horror films seem to operate in stages. We've already seen the creature features. The decade of the slasher. And now we've reached the age of excessive blood and guts. But there's a reason Saw has been able to release a new movie every Halloween and Hostel only made two before going under. Sure, viewers pack seats because of girls being thrown in pits full of syringes and reverse bear traps that could rip open your face. But it's more than that. These movies are smart. You're not watching a guy in a mask chase around a bunch of teenage girls for an hour and a half, and you're not just watching people being ripped to shreds for the hell of it. You're watching a cancer patient teaching people lessons on how to live. You're drawn into the traps because they're clever, and you follow the plot because it takes more than one movie to spell it all out. You need to be actively engaged instead of just looking.
Obviously the Saw series must end one day. The story is going to wrap up and we're all going to move on. But that's not going to be until they stop making so much money and a new era of horror movies comes into play.
When that will be, who can say.
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