You don't win friends with salad:
The posters arriving in theaters nationwide are advertisements for Hostel II, a horror movie due in the summer from Lionsgate Entertainment. The film's director, gore merchant Eli Roth, conceded last week that he was "pleasantly surprised" that the extreme image was approved by the Motion Picture Association of America; every inch of the poster is packed with splayed organs and moist tissue.
"My jaw was on the ground when I first saw the poster," Roth said. "It's unbelievably beautiful. It's one of the most beautiful posters I've ever seen."
Beauty, clearly, is in the eye of the beholder on this one.
On the Web site hubs of horror and genre fans, debate is under way about the poster and Hostel II; several postings on the Harry Knowles site Ain't It Cool News dismissed the movie as "torture porn" and railed against the poster as a sick display. Others wondered what exactly their peers were so upset about.
"You guys," one fan wrote, "must hate walking down the meat aisle in the grocery store."
No, what we hate is seeing some self-appointed standard bearer for the so-called New Wave of Horror get all giddy like a schoolboy over a piece of marketing that does nothing to advance the genre except for seeing how much Lucio Fulci it can rip off. Roth's self-righteous defenders miss the point: I don't care that he's trying to gross me out, or that he's "pushing the envelope" of gore, I care that his idea of modern horror consists of little more than exsanguinating attractive teens.
Understand something, I'm not "offended" or "distressed" by a girl peeling her skin off in a bathtub (Cabin Fever) or a guy getting his Achilles tendon sliced (Hostel). I've seen Dead Alive, Cannibal Holocaust, August Underground, and several of the Guinea Pig series. I'm familiar with the output of the so-called "Splat Pack" and, with the exception of Neil Marshall, they're all pretty one note. Splatter is one thing, but horror - real horror - is psychological as well as physical. Simply heaping guts on tops of guts isn't frightening as much as it is...nauseating.
The image gave pause to the advertising reviewers at the MPAA, where the image was given "more consideration and review than most posters," Palen said. (MPAA spokeswoman Kori Bernards said Friday she did not have any direct knowledge of the Hostel II images.) For what it's worth, Roth said he believes the photo is such a close-up (and so bloodless) that the tissue image is abstract enough to stay within MPAA taste guidelines.
"That's the beauty of it," he said. "It tells you everything you need to know about this movie, but it doesn't give away anything about the story. When you add the words Hostel II, it becomes extremely disturbing. You know those poor girls are in for it."
The "poor girls" would be the on-screen victims in Hostel II, which is now in postproduction in Los Angeles. The sequel carries on from the 2005 movie that presented an Eastern European hot spot for the bored rich who pay to torture and snuff tourists; both films are produced by Quentin Tarantino.
Scared yet? Yeah, me neither. It's funny, I re-watched The Exorcist last night and was struck with how much more frightening it was than shit nowadays that seems to equate horror with amount of blood spilled. Certainly, violence is an adjunct of horror, but not horror itself.
Roth claims his meaty movie poster is a public service, in a way. "This makes it very clear what my movie is. Nobody is going to think they are walking into Happy Feet: Part II. Not after they see that poster."
Much as I'd like to mock Roth for his idiocy, it isn't like making the poster more graphic makes that much difference. I've lost count of the number of R-rated movies I've been to that have enjoyed the attentions of parents with their toddlers. If Moms and Dads can't be arsed to pay attention to the ratings of the movies they attend with their kids, I don't know that having some ground chuck on the poster is going to make a lot of difference.
Amen. When I first saw the name ‘Tarantino’ and ‘horror film’ I thought, this is gonna kick ass. Then I saw the director wasn’t him, but Roth, and already having decided Cabin Fever was the most un-terrifying movie I’d seen in a long time, I lost all hope that Hostel would be any better than another Friday the 30th.