Sunday, October 07, 2007

movie advertising not targeted toward me

Study, if you will, the following teaser poster for the forthcoming Saw: Ad Nauseum....


I guess the Saw movie franchise is among the more successful recent examples of high-gloss torture porn (see also: "24"). It's not my kind of horror movie though.... I'm not terribly interested in movies whose sole function is to display unthinkable deaths with a showcase of creative makeup, special effects, and/or camera wizardry. Nor do I particularly seek out movies about serial killers with disposable amounts of time and income to create overly elaborate ruses in which they are able to creatively murder people by the tens and twenties. I do think that the horror genre is absolutely necessary for film, but I prefer horror movies that are more than simply one-dimensional. I don't mind a good dose of gore.... but how about making the movie worth watching, too? The Descent, my favorite movie of 2006, was marketed to be trashy shlock like Saw, but was in fact a masterwork of filmmaking and transcended the horror genre to remind me (and the rest of us) that these kind of movies can actually have depth while simultaneously scaring the crap out of you.

So, back to the poster. Is this supposed to be scary? Is this supposed to hail the arrival of a terrifying new horror movie about to hit the big screen? Let's see....

Swine with bad wig wearing a red burka and fetishist leather stiletto boots is chained to a motorized wheelchair fitted with cranks.

Is this supposed to fill me (i.e. the average movie-goer passing the theatre) with dread? How exactly does this poster even get a fan of Saw excited to the see the movie? Maybe I'm missing something, having never seen any of the movies. Is there some kind of terrifying pig-in-fetishwear twist I missed out on? Perhaps.

In the end, I see this poster and all I can think is, "what the fuck?"

10 comments:

Writeprocrastinator said...

I think the poster serves its purpose rather well and is indicative of the direction the franchise is going...alienate everybody but the most hardcore psychos.

Of course, I can't get into anything that is gorier than what Zack Snyder did with "300" or "Dawn of The Dead."

is that so wrong? said...

But it's a pig! In bitch boots! WTF??

Writeprocrastinator said...

Um, it's for the Dalists into torture porn?

Jeanette said...

Oh yeah, I thought Beverly Mithchell of SEVENTH HEAVEN fame was in these movies...

Dale said...

That's not Dale-ists isn't WP? haha.

I saw the first and second Saw movies and torture porn's probably a good descriptor. The poster's ridiculous really. But should I talk? I'm halfway through Tarantino's Death Proof and enjoying it but there's some really brutal girl killin' at the hands or rather wheels of Kurt Russell's character.

The Descent sounds good, I'll have to check it out.

is that so wrong? said...

Dale: Death Proof rocks! (In fact, it's really too bad that it's not included on a entire Grindhouse DVD, because i think it's a nice contrast to Robert Rodriguez's zombie-fest that came before it.) Wait till you get to the end, though. Rosario Dawson and her hot cowboy boots.... mmmm....

Dale said...

I finished it off and well, well, well, Rosario comes through doesn't she!? I really liked it and didn't see the Rodriguez entry so I wish they'd been released together too.

The soundtrack was excellent but some of the writing was a bit subpar. Could Tracie Thoms have sounded less black? Otherwise, loved it.

Writeprocrastinator said...

Tag, you're it.

Jennica said...

The best part about the poster is its tagline: "IT'S A TRAP".

Oh, so that's what it is...

BeckEye said...

I've never seen any of the Saw movies either, and I have no desire to. It's like this millenium's version of Faces of Death, which everyone in my high school talked about non-stop.