Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 3:02 pm Posts: 10690 Location: Lost in Twilight's Blue
I think this movie looks horrible but the term "torture porn" and the outcry over those posters and subsequent smack down by the MPAA is just ridiculous.
_________________ Scared to say what is your passion, So slag it all, Bitter's in fashion, Fear of failure's all you've started, The jury is in, verdict: Retarded
A man and a woman awaken to find themselves captured in a cellar. As their kidnapper drives them psychologically mad, the truth about their horrific abduction is revealed.
In the wake of a public outcry against Los Angeles billboards and New York taxicab tops advertising the upcoming movie "Captivity" with images of the abduction, torture and death of a young woman, After Dark Films said it will take down the offending ads by 2 p.m. today.
After Dark, its theatrical distribution partner Lionsgate Films and the MPAA received a barrage of phone calls objecting to the gratuitous depiction of the film's star Elisha Cuthbert being tortured and killed.
The billboards, first posted March 13, feature four frames with captions above each one. "Abduction" shows Cuthbert with a gloved hand over her face; "Confinement" features the actress behind a chain-link fence with a bloody finger poking through; "Torture" depicts Cuthbert's face, covered in white gauze, with tubes shoved up her nose; and "Termination" shows her with her head thrown back, seemingly dead.
In the wake of a public outcry against Los Angeles billboards and New York taxicab tops advertising the upcoming movie "Captivity" with images of the abduction, torture and death of a young woman, After Dark Films said it will take down the offending ads by 2 p.m. today.
After Dark, its theatrical distribution partner Lionsgate Films and the MPAA received a barrage of phone calls objecting to the gratuitous depiction of the film's star Elisha Cuthbert being tortured and killed.
The billboards, first posted March 13, feature four frames with captions above each one. "Abduction" shows Cuthbert with a gloved hand over her face; "Confinement" features the actress behind a chain-link fence with a bloody finger poking through; "Torture" depicts Cuthbert's face, covered in white gauze, with tubes shoved up her nose; and "Termination" shows her with her head thrown back, seemingly dead.
I think this movie looks horrible but the term "torture porn" and the outcry over those posters and subsequent smack down by the MPAA is just ridiculous.
There certainly has been some overreaction, bordering on censorship, but there seems to be a growing audience for the "young white chick gets abducted and tortured" film genre. There's a distinctly sexual edge to those promotional billboards. Kinda disturbing for old folks like me.
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 3:02 pm Posts: 10690 Location: Lost in Twilight's Blue
broken iris wrote:
Mercury wrote:
I think this movie looks horrible but the term "torture porn" and the outcry over those posters and subsequent smack down by the MPAA is just ridiculous.
There certainly has been some overreaction, bordering on censorship, but there seems to be a growing audience for the "young white chick gets abducted and tortured" film genre. There's a distinctly sexual edge to those promotional billboards. Kinda disturbing for old folks like me.
Old folks? You're not much older than me.
For people who don't really love horror this might seem odd but it's all part of a cycle that's been going on with the genre at least since the slasher film days. Basically, these movies are cheap to make and turn a huge profit for the studios, so they make a lot of them and market and promote them in basically the same way (see bart d's comment) because it's easy and they don't have to think about it. The industry as a whole makes a lot of money off of them and everyone is happy until there's some moral outrage over one of them, which inevitably happens. Deep down the studios are pretty much embarassed of these pictures and once they start to get any kind of pressure put on them they'll back down.
To the majority of people horror films, in whatever form they've most recently taken, will go away for a while, or at least not be as popular as they are at the moment, and then come back around again a few years later. I'd say we're on the back end of this cycle right now with a whole lot of really cookie cutter garbage just being tossed out there and trying to look as extreme as possible. I'm more offended by the lack of creativity on this one.
_________________ Scared to say what is your passion, So slag it all, Bitter's in fashion, Fear of failure's all you've started, The jury is in, verdict: Retarded
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 12:47 am Posts: 46000 Location: Reasonville
broken iris wrote:
Scathing spoiler filled review on aicn.com. And no boobies in the film. Sorry crew.
no way i'm seeing this after reading that.
_________________ No matter how dark the storm gets overhead They say someone's watching from the calm at the edge What about us when we're down here in it? We gotta watch our backs
I saw this movie about 2 months ago at an advanced screening, so hopefully its been dramatically changed by now, but I doubt it if a release date has already been set.
Elisha Cuthbert plays a beautiful, world-famous, model who is suddenly abducted and thrown into a dungeon sort of room in the basement of a house. She is supposedly "tortured" and threatened with death, but the torture is not even close to anything frightening, and borders on comical, with her falling into a sandpit and only being allowed one dress to change into as some of the horrible, heartless things her kidnapper does to her.
I don't want to give away too much, not that there's really anything you wont guess within the first 15 minutes, but the two cops, who are shown for about five minutes for the entire movie, have one and only one suspect, so there are about a total of 5 people in the whole movie. Not one of the characters is really developed at all, so you don't get attached to or care at all about any of them. And every supposed "twist" was obvious at least an hour before it actually happened. Almost everything in the movie, from the relationships of the girl being tortured, to the cops, to the reason for her abduction is just so contrived and fake. It really is just a cheesy movie with horrible acting, a bad script and a very predictable ending. If I could I would give this movie less than one star, it was a free screening and everyone kept shouting that they wanted their money back! Don't waste your time or money.
Joined: Tue Jan 16, 2007 10:41 pm Posts: 7563 Location: Calgary, AB Gender: Male
i couldn't see the pics above, so I found the billboard again
I don't see this as being any worse than the Saw posters, but given that a girl getting kidnapped and tortured often gets in the news, I could see how it might put some people off. I've always thought that the girl in the poster doesn't even look like Elisha though.
Strange how this turned out to be so shitty. She is usually pretty smart with her roles, so I"m wondering if this looked better on paper and it's just the director that turned it to shit.
Either way, The Girl Next Door is still a great fix for that Cuthbert itch.
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 7:19 pm Posts: 39068 Location: Chapel Hill, NC, USA Gender: Male
I read "sledgehammer to the balls" and threw up.
_________________ "Though some may think there should be a separation between art/music and politics, it should be reinforced that art can be a form of nonviolent protest." - e.v.
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