The Splat Pack

Kneel before the new altar of gore:

The only thing that could end this horrorteurs lovefest, it seems, is if the extreme gore craze starts to suffer from, well, overkill.

I'm re-drafting my horror script The Farmhouse and I still haven't seen Hostel or a Saw movie or The Devil's Rejects. But I'm about to see all of this 'new wave horror' for research purposes. If what this TIME article describes is where the horror market is right now, I hope my more cerebral horror film arrives when this sadist streak truly does pass the overkill mark.

UPDATE: I have now seen the first Saw movie. Looking beyond the gore and sadism, it does some nice work with fractured storytelling and keeps you guessing as to the identity of the serial killer who likes to force people to solve deadly and gruesome puzzles. The score is way too aggressive at times and the acting is uniformly mediocre, but it is nonetheless a very accomplished second feature. There are a lot of unanswered questions at the end, which I presume the next two Saw movies address-- and which makes me presume that Saw was designed from the getgo to be franchisable.

I didn't have any problem with the gore and sadism since the "puzzles" that Jigsaw's victims find themselves in are so implausibly baroque. Se7en, it seems, threw down the gauntlet for this sort of serial killer, and Saw has no choice but to go it one step beyond the pale. Saw can't actually conjure anything as emotionally horrific as Se7en's head in a box, but it generates a great deal more suspense with its puzzes and a good deal more horror because the audience is allowed to empathize with the characters as they are tortured.

I am not at all surprised it was a hit; I think the conclusion that the studios should've drawn is not only do low-budget horror movies with good scripts make a lot of money, but any low-budget movie with a good script can make money. I think with horror like this you don't necessarily need great acting performances, which perhaps tilts the horror equation a little more towards profitability, since it removes several variables. Nonetheless, SAG's low budget agreement (under $1M; Saw's production budget was reported to be $1.2M) is actually low budget for a mini-major, whereas it runs on the high curve of budget for a true indie -- paying the actors and making sure all SAG rules were followed was almost certainly the biggest line item on Bunker Hill. (The actors were great; it's just that the crew wished they had been treated -- and paid -- as well as the actors.)

UPDATE #2: Interesting discussion between Scott Tobias and Noel Murray on the future of the horror genre.