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“Saw: A Hardcore Parody”, Is a fantastic, well scripted and well played parody. The overall story is very interesting and will keep your attention the entire time. The different sets each scene takes place in, gives you a true feeling of the actuall movie and the acting by the cast is tremendous. You will be taken on a ride in this “Triple-X Thriller” as James Bartholet and Syren Demar, who play the main detectives are on a hunt for someone who is killing off porn stars. If you liked the original “Saw”, then you will certainly enjoy “Saw: A Hardcore Parody”, with its non stop action and great sex. In the review, I am going to leave out a good portion of the story segments, as I feel, it would take a lot away from the dvd when you watch it, by knowing many of the surprises in store. Trust me, the story is as strong as the sex.
This film will be the ninth entry in the long-running franchise known for its terrifying contraptions and rather convoluted storytelling, not to mention, being the impetus for the wave of “torture porn” horror that would become all the rage in the mid-2000s. However, as the series makes its seventeenth anniversary, I think it’s time we go back to where it all started by focusing on the film I believe is THE quintessential Post-9/11 horror film: James Wan’s SAW (2004).
SAW’s release forced horror audiences to bear witness to increasingly violent, graphic, and bleak filmmaking. As coined by film critic David Edelstein, this type of filmmaking would come to be known as “torture porn”. This moniker would later be used as a demoralizing sentiment to lessen the status of these films, and by extension, these filmmakers, who seemed to have thrived in this new pocket of horror that had been formed. And while admittedly, yes, some of these films aren’t perfect (not many are), they offer this unique perspective into the collective unconscious that America had molded at the time. Enter: Post-9/11 Cinema.
As Kevin J. Wetmore, author of , describes, “one key difference between pre-9/11 horror and post-9/11 horror, is that the former frequently allows for hope and the latter just as frequently does not”. In his book, Wetmore establishes the two defining factors of the torture porn subgenre. Films that are ostensibly released after the events of Sept. 11th, 2001, and, more importantly, imbued with the tonal, newfound nihilism that was shared among other story-telling mediums. These horror films, such as Eli Roth’s Hostel (2005) and Cabin Fever (2003), The Strangers (2008), Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses (2003) & The Devil’s Rejects (2005), and the aforementioned SAW, while not directly announcing themselves as a product of the rhetoric of its time, are undeniably related and in some way influenced by certain ideas that have permeated into the 2000s American zeitgeist, and, consequently, Post-9/11 Cinema.
Beyond “Torture Porn”: Why ‘SAW’ is the Quintessential Post 9-11 Horror Film
