Yet another film has been added to the growing catalogue of the so-called "torture-porn" genre. After the hugely popular "Saw" and "Hostel" movies comes "Captivity", probably no better and no worse than the others, but further evidence that the movie-going public are becoming more and more accepting of this kind of grossness.
In fact, "accepting" is something of an under-statement: there is clearly a burgeoning demand out there. I have always assumed that the audiences for such films mainly comprise older teens and immature twenty-somethings learning how to push their limits, but I am quite prepared to be wrong about that. I can't help but worry about the collective psyche of our young people (here I am sounding like a village elder), and I have disturbing visions of young kids in disadvantaged households illicitly obtaining the DVDs.
The slasher pics of the eighties and the scarey (as they were then considered) paranormal films of the seventies were also hugely popular, and some of the earliest movies ever made were horror films (I admit to a rather embarrassed enjoyment of old European silent films like "Nosferatu" and "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari"). So there is clearly something in us which delights in such perversity.
But these recent movies take violence and sadism to a much more disturbing extreme. Unlike slasher movies, the graphically-portrayed suffering, pain and humilation of the victim is the point of these new offerings, and actual death may be an irrelevant after-thought.
I have never actually seen any of these films - I am pretty sure I wouldn't be able to cope with them, nor would I find in them any kind of intellectual stimulus, entertainment or enjoyment, perverse or otherwise - but I do worry about a society where such fare can become mainstream.
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