Box Office Review: American Teens Are Morons
Will This Go to Trial and Move to L.A., too? BART Cop Smashes Drunk Guy's Head through Window
Books for L.A. Nerds: Saints of California
Map of the Day: Outdoor Skating Rinks in Los Angeles
Gobble, Gobble Give Needs Your Help for Thanksgiving
In one of the rarest of rare occurrences, a movie in its fifth week of release finally clawed its way to the top of the box office. Paramount pushed Paranormal Activity into over a thousand new theaters and the gamble paid off handsomely as the horror sleeper raked in $22M ($62.4M) to easily win the weekend. Torture porn shit-show Saw VI endured a brutal debut as it pulled in a weak $14.8M (yay!) while last week's champ Where the Wild Things Are stumbled a bit in its second weekend ($14.4M | $53.9M). The formulaic Law Abiding Citizen ($12.7M | $40.3M) and the half-funny Couples Retreat ($11M | $78.2M) rounded out the top 5.
Japanese manga-something Astro Boy opened weakly ($7M) as it just managed to top the mediocre The Stepfather ($6.5M | $20.3M). Cirque du Freak came in well below expectations in its first frame ($6.3M) as it failed to scare up much of the moronic Twilight audience. The resilient Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs ($5.6M | $115.2M) and the goofy-fun Zombieland ($4.3M | $67.3M) rounded out the top 10, just ahead of the brutally disappointing Amelia ($4M) (no Oscar for Hilary this time). In limited release, Antichrist did excellent business ($12,250 per theater), while (Untitled) was solid ($6367) and Motherhood was dreadful ($1202).
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
One of the highlights of my weekend had to be the unofficial estimates of SAW VI ticket sales.
The term "Torture-Porn" gets thrown around a lot and it really makes a critic sound stupid.
Paranormal Activity, by all account, could be considered Torture Porn as well. You go into it with the title stating this was found footage. So in a sense, you're know the victims here are the couple. Their fate lies within 80 minutes of a demon torturing them and they're not able to run away from it. It's a make believe snuff film. You're just waiting to see how the characters die at the hands of this thing.
So does it need to have blood in order to be considered torture porn? Because people viewing this are going in to see them get tortured by the villain. Be it some jigsaw character or some demon, they're both the same.
While I don't much care for the saw franchise, Saw 6 has already made back it's production budget, so it's a win for the studio already. It has got to be one of the most profitable series going today, and I don't see it stopping anytime soon.
If you didn't care for it, fine. Though, to be honest both films strike a nerve with current topical events. Saw VI going after health care executives and Paranormal Activity going after douchebag day traders.
Sort of makes me want to cheer for the bad guy to kill them in an even more torturous method.
The audience for the Saw gets off on the cruelty and physical violence done to the characters in the same way that people watching pornography get off on the sex.
It is torture porn. I could spend time coming up with a better way of describing it, but the film doesn't deserve another second of anyone's time. It's vile. It deserves to be dismissed.
The term "Torture-Porn" may get thrown around a lot, but I can't think of film franchise for which it is more apt (if the Saw series didn't create it, I'm not sure who would truly deserve the honor).
Use it, Josh. Your criticism is as on-target as ever.
And yes, for the record, I'm in the Saw haters camp. It's a pile of steaming celluloid.
While I found Paranormal Activity torture to watch and mostly undeserving of its box-office success, it was most definitely not "torture-porn". More fumbling, unenticing "torture-erotica". I was never, ever squeamish. Just bored to tears.