Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

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critic than the film. It shows a lack of understanding and ability to understand and
appreciate a horror film as something more than just a horror film.”
(http://www.aintitcool.com/node/32868) I will therefore use the term justified by
Jeremy Morris- “Torture-Horror” (2010; 54). Morris’s overarching argument is that
viewing and enjoying depictions of torture is not inherently wrong, as such films
attempt to push the boundaries of fear into something more upsetting. Morris asserts
that “By putting the audience on the side of the torturer in some way or other, the
audience is disturbed in a way that goes beyond the fear generated by bare depictions
of torture.” (55) This genre can be seen to initially apply to Saw (2004; dir. Wan), 17
which is a film about two men chained by the ankle in a single dirty industrial
bathroom. This scenario intercuts between the events that brought them into this
situation, and the police investigation that is trying to find the man they call
‘Jigsaw’, who captures people, taunts them, and forces them to race against time,
risking their own bodies to find a way out. The inventiveness of the set pieces as
well as an unflinching focus upon the pain and suffering of the victims become the
key points of the formula for these films. This also follows closely upon the darker,
more uncomfortable death scenes in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a film which
some of Saw’s set pieces echo. Aside from similar lighting and colour palettes
between the two films, the intensity of the death and dismemberment sequences are
alike. Also, the scene of Erin and Andy trapped in the Hewitt’s basement establish
similar aesthetic design, emotional resonance and narrative impact to the framing
17 Edelstein actually dates the sub-genre back to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004). I
agree with Edelstein’s inclusion of the film within this aesthetic tendency, however, Saw more closely
follows the slasher tradition, while Gibson’s film appropriates the aesthetic in response to the
historical tradition of passion plays within Catholicism. (The film was defended by the Vatican based
on statements included in John L. Allen, Jr.’s article in the National Catholic Reporter, Vol. 3, No. 22,
23/01/2004)