by Michael Allen

Created on: September 19, 2008   Last Updated: December 24, 2011

Movies like "Hostel," "Hostel II," the "Saw" series and "Wolf Creek" offer incidences of gruesomeness violence that is meant to stimulate while ignoring the characters that are dehumanized and later disemboweled. In "Hostel II" American backpackers are beaten, drugged, and seduced into being part of a murder cult. Slovakia is not a nice place to visit according to this movie. Three young women who go off to a remote foreign country are later stalked by a group of rich men, who see murder as a sport. As well, a company seeks profits from the deaths of these young people from the murderers. Many of the young men and women are savagely tortured, maimed and finally brutally killed. Some of the murderers get their just desert in the end, all the while under a guise that this film is comedic or light-hearted fun. This is not fun this is something else, this is "torture porn."

Cinema's "torture porn" genre both shocks and excites the audience, but on a more unconscious level people's desire for safe expressions of violence on screen or for others, repressed sexual desire, are being displayed in the form of entertainment. The sociopath who is central to most horror films is an individual who has become stuck in his or her journey towards individuation and self actualization. Although, the ninety minute structure of most modern day films does not allow for the unearthing of the antagonists early life, some films like the original Friday the 13th , show a character who has become deeply disturbed through childhood abuse or humiliation. The reason for the absence of any early history, in cinema, of most antagonists is to distance the audience from the character and to discourage the process of empathy. Just as real life torturers create an us versus them mentality or an in group out group situation, so too does the audience dehumanize or withdraw empathy from the antagonist. This emotional distance also eases the pain of seeing the so-called villain murdered or overpowered during the climax of the film, which is a formula used by most studios.

There are many instances in "Hostel II" where characters like Loma (Heather Matarazzo), and Vera Jordanova (Axelle) are tied up, restrained, or helpless in some way, thereby, unconsciously bringing forth earlier memories, within the audience, of being helpless as children at the hands of our more powerful parents. All of us were completely dependent on a greater more powerful person for our survival in early childhood. These early

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