Like the killers that populate them, horror franchises just will not die. In the last 20 years, few horror franchises have enjoyed quite as much success as the Saw movies. Once an October tradition, Leigh Whannell (Upgrade) and James Wan’s Saw introduced the world to ‘Torture Porn’, leading to seven sequels over a 13 year […]
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Somewhere in between ‘masked slashers’ and ‘insidious conjurings’, torture porn briefly reigned in horror. From Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects to Eli Roth’s Hostel and the ‘New French Extremity‘ movement, horror fans flocked to movies characterized by extreme graphic violence. However, it all started with James Wan’s Saw in 2004. The low-budget movie kickstarted a […]
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Fourteen years ago, Lionsgate Films released a small independent horror film by two unknown filmmakers. The filmmakers were James Wan and Leigh Whannell. Yes, the same James Wan responsible for The Conjuring and Insidious franchises. He’s also directing a little movie called Aquaman. And Leigh Whannell just directed one of 2018’s better genre films, Upgrade. […]
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Coinciding with the American ‘Torture Porn‘ movement in the early to mid-2000’s, the ‘New French Extremity’ subgenre, a term coined by scholar Alexandra West, re-acquainted horror fans with levels of gore and violence missing from theater screens since the early 1980’s. The New French Extremism was an eclectic collection of disparate films that were part […]
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I can’t imagine many people in 2017 begging for another entry in the Saw franchise. Several movie into most horror franchises are typically marked by a descent into self-parody. In some cases, later sequels just shrug their shoulders, give up, and jettison themselves into space (see Hellraiser, Leprechaun). Once a Halloween tradition in the 2000’s, […]
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