Turistas (2006) 1/2 star
I ain't even gonna give this piece of shit a full summary. I AM going to use it to discuss my dislike of the new Torture-Porn genre that seems so popular.
As for Turistas, it follows American/European tourists in Brazil. They are led to a shack in the jungle with promises of fun, and beautiful scenery. Upon arrival, they are harvested for organs by a surgeon that tries to justify this crapfest with a monologue on class distinction, and American Colonialism. Fuck that, this is an excuse to watch naked girls get dismembered in the most graphic and realistic manner possible.
I understand some of entertainments move to depictions of realistic violence. It accomplishes two different and important things.
1) Graphic depictions of violence in film/TV serve to portray it as it is, not as action without consequence. The days of the A-Team, "Hey look we shot 1500 rounds and nobody died!" and early Star Wars "Don't worry about all the people we killed, you can't see their faces, and all they did was fall down!" did nothing but make violence look like fun without repercussion.
In modern film/TV we see violence as it actual is. Cries of pain, blood, and the panic that sets in before death...it often makes a point that violence lasts long past the action itself.
2) Graphic depictions of violence make a film or TV show look more like reality. The truth that NYPD spoke in its use of graphic violence, was that many situations that cops face exist in the "grey" zone. Violence, while distasteful to watch, can allow resolution of conflicts that no other action could or would.
Turistas (plus Hostel, and their ilk) aren't trying to accomplish either of these things. Unlike the Friday the 13th movies, they aren't even trying to amuse with the creativity of the victims deaths. There is something...meaner here.
As the father of a daughter, and former law enforcement officer who has taken more than a few criminal justice classes, the persons who scare the shit out of me are sexual sadists. The combination of violence and sexuality they bring to their crimes often results in a long, torturous death for their victims. The torture/porn genre feels like it is playing to just these animals. In Turistas the person who we see graphically having their organs removed is the young lady pictured above, and not only was she semi-conscious, she was naked. It felt like we were supposed to be ogling her perfect body as she was systematically taken apart...and like it.
Sorry to bring a note of seriousness to the party with this, but these movies don't feel like fun to me. The horror I like is either meant to scare, or amuse. Again, the Friday the 13th series, Nightmare on Elm St series, etc., have grisly deaths and naked women, but they do it with a tongue-in-cheek manner that the audience is all too aware of. Torture-porn isn't laughing, it seems like it is trying to share its genuine fondness for the pain of others with us. Yuck.
16 comments:
I respect your reasons for not liking the torture genre, but I thought this one was pretty effective. I really liked the underwater chase in the caves at the end, but I'm always a sucker for such clausterphobic things. Nice review!
It became a different movie half-way through JPX. I thought the movie after the escape was effective and pretty original, but I had already slipped into hatred by that time...
I think you better avoid the SAW franchise, Cry Wolf, Hostel, and Wolf Creek!
Yeah, I've avoided that whole genre for just the reasons you've spelled out, miko.
I liked Hostile and the first 2 Saw movies ok but I thought Turistas was a bomb too. Just something about it that said uh....yeah to me.
I recommend Wolf Creek.
I veer away from this genre as well. I just don't have an interest in it at all.
i was riding the T last night with a colleague and we started discussing the 'thon, so of course he had a list of recommendations for me, including turistas, and that's when i gave him my "no torture porn" spiel. it may be the only sub-genre i totally avoid.
Shark, DCD, AC, I had no idea if I would find anybody who agreed with me on this one...
Well AC, let's hear your spiel!
I'd like to know if you avoid these things for the same reasons I do. (So sue me, I'm needy for affirmation. I need, I need!)
i do agree with you miko (don't i almost always?). i don't watch torture porn because it is too emotionally disturbing to me for exactly the reasons you state. i can handle a splatterfest but i just can't handle extended scenes of realistic cruelty/torture/vivisection. maybe this'll change over time but i doubt it. i suspect i'm just too damn squeamish or tenderhearted or both.
did you know turistas was a torture-porn movie when you picked it?
kinda agree with dcd...gore for the sake of shock value...isn't scary or frighting to me....
I didn't pick it AC, it was on Encore or Cinemax.
I don't think squeamish has anything to do with it (I used to love TLC's Operation show). I've seen some nasty shit in my day (crime victims, car accidents, etc.), and I've been trained in violence myself. It's the feeling that somehow this whole genre is trying to make us complicit in the enjoyment of the torturer. I always felt that people capable of torture are a whole other level of crazy...the act of killing or hurting someone as an art, or method of sexual satisfaction. I guess I don't like the feeling of sharing emotions with such creatures.
Jesus, could I have made this anymore serious? Sorry. It's just a movie Miko, lighten up...
i completely share that sentiment, miko, but as i am not one of those people that can watch operations, i suspect that squeamishness is also part of the aversion to torture-porn in my case.
I'm not interested in this sub genre, either.
And I really don't get ratings. Why is a naked woman getting dismembered an "R" rating? But I can't see two people just fucking the way the good lord intended unless I go to a seedy video store?
(I don't really want to see two people fucking, but I think I would rather see that than one person getting dismembered.)
Yikes, I could never watch that TLC show, even for a second.
I don't think there are any fans of torture porn (as a subgenre) on this blog. However, I have to cite the first Hostel movie as pretty good, even while it made me feel like someone was stepping on my neck.
It's kind of what I said about that bad Lovecraft flickette not earning its chops to actually have a dead baby in it* -- if you have a movie made skillfully enough to support such extremes, then perhaps you've made something effective and worth watching.
If you're just going to gross people out, then yeah, that's not really fun.
*A bit off-topic, but I've always felt Basic Instinct's real flaw is that it's too stupid to justify edging into controversial zones.
Octo, I saw Hostel late one night on one of the movie channels and did not have the same visceral reaction of hatred that Turistas caused in me. I suppose it could go to your point, that it was a better movie and earned its violence cred. I think it was because it was SUPPOSED to be about the sadists that paid for the opportunity to enjoy the sexual satisfaction that the violence brought them.
I guess the best analogy I can make (unlike Jordan, I can't think of any examples off-hand) would be rape scenes in movies. If it is filmed to show the horror of the act or the depravity of the rapist, then it may be uncomfortable to watch, but you understand the scene. I have seen some rape scenes in movies, that looked like they were filmed for porn, as if they WANT you to find it arousing. That's F'ed up, and what I felt Turistas was trying to do with their nude surgery scene.
Last post on Torture/Porn for me. I am annoying myself with my seriousness.
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