1990s serial killer movies like “The Silence of the Lambs” to the torture porn subgenre James Wan’s low-budget hit is often credited with kick-starting — and Fincher isn’t happy with that association at all.
“It was offensive to me on a certain level that when ‘Saw’ and those other movies came out, people said, ‘Well, torture porn really started with ‘Seven,'” he told Playboy in 2014, adding a “F*** you” for good measure. Noting the film was “lurid” on purpose, he further emphasized that he and writer Andrew Kevin Walker were “extremely conscious of the fact that we were talking about torture, but we never actually showed it.”
“Saw” itself is pretty mild compared to what came after, but there’s little doubt it paved the way for much grislier and more nihilistic horror movies, leading David Edelstein to coin the term “torture porn” in 2006. Citing Greg McLean’s “Wolf Creek,” Rob Zombie’s “The Devil’s Rejects,” and “Eli Roth’s “Hostel” (all released in 2005), he likened them more to gruesome ’70s exploitation flicks than ’80s and ’90s slasher/serial killer films. But does “Saw” fit in this category? And is Fincher right to suggest it tarnishes the legacy of “Seven”?
