Every once in a while a buzzword comes along and catches on in the film community, only to be systematically run into the ground. With the rapid approach of Halloween, it’s the time of year for the usual glut of horror films (like this month's Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning and Saw 3), and with them comes this year's overdone, already on the way out, derogatory piece of slang – Torture Porn.

Now, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, it was popularized earlier this year with a series of articles examining the success of last year’s hits Saw 2 and The Devil’s Rejects and this year’s Hostel. With their low budgets and huge returns, Hollywood keeps asking for more, and people have begun questioning what it is that makes them so popular. Friends in the industry have been complaining that this year's crop of producers keep demanding, “Bring me a Hostel,” and films that were once slasher films have begun sliding from piling up several bodies to slowly torturing just a few.

And frankly I have no real problem with the new crop of films. In fact, I’ve enjoyed several of the well made ones. But as horror filmmakers continue their never-ending search for new things to scare us, film critics continue their never-ending search for phrases that help marginalize work they don’t enjoy or understand. And this year's abused catch phrase is Torture Porn.

Frankly I think the word porn is, oh, let’s just say … a tad bit unfair. There are few people in the world that watch these films for that kind of pleasure. In fact, they wear their trench coats to be noticed. If these films lacked plot or substance of any kind, I could go along with it. But even the least among them is trying. I’m no fan of the Saw series, but even in my dislike of it I can identify the attempt to scare people by forcing them to think about how far they would go to save their own life. Hostel certainly isn’t high art, but its use of the male fantasy (easy European girls) as the tool to lure men to their deaths is highly effective and at the very least will give some men pause. Even the latest Texas Chainsaw Massacre film explored the horrors of war theme and what desperate men do in desperate situations in its attempt to entertain.

These aren’t the ideas of films dedicated only towards feeding a primal need to see blood, but rather are exploring new avenues of terror. Once upon a time a mere shadow on the wall scared an audience. And once we’d seen enough creepy shadows they started showing us monsters. And once monsters bloodlessly killing people stopped scaring us they added blood. Then gore. Then we met an endless stream of mad unstoppable killers. Then we met the murderer next door in the form of the scheming serial killer. We’ve seen an endless ramp up of blood and violence since the invention of the horror film, and this is far from the last step -- it is merely the next logical step.

Porn? Hardly. It’s just another way to scare audiences into parting with their money. And it's working.

C. Robert Cargill

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