"Live Animals" - - Disturbing On No Many Levels

A man, our protagonist, is tied down to a chair. Behind him stand a few goons dressed in all black. They cradle their weapons but are ready at any moment to gun down their captive if he tries to escape. The villain stands in front of the helpless hero. He gloats. The villain implies rape. The hero is helpless, facing violation in ways we hope we never have to go through ourselves. The villain leans over and begins rubbing the hero's thighs.

He squirms.

We squirm.

But the scene I'm describing isn't from the movie "Live Animals," it's from the new James Bond film "Skyfall." I saw that movie opening weekend and the theater was fairly packed. But when that scene played out, the theater was dead quiet other than the sound of the male viewers, myself included, shifting uncomfortably in their seats.

So what's my point? It's that "Live Animals" is not nearly as disturbing as it should be,

"Live Animals" is basically an Asylum version of "Hostel." A bunch of young adults are kidnapped and stored in a horse stable where they are humiliated and tortured with the end result being one guys tongue getting ripped out and one woman sold into sex slavery. Then the remaining prisoners break free and make stupid decisions and run around with guns shooting people. Been there, done that.

There's a drawn out sequence where the woman who is going to be sold is propped up like a piece of meat as a potential buyer circles her. In between the lewd comments, I started to think back to that scene in "Skyfall." Basically, when torture porn is out-grossed out by a mainstream PG-13 film, you've got problems. Most of the audience of these types of films are male, so why not give them something to make them feel really uncomfortable i.e. male rape. Sure, the female rape may give the sickos in the audience some illicit thrill, but male rape makes your whole audience uncomfortable. In my review of Fortress I point out that the threat of male rape (and robot rape) made the movie realistically uncomfortable.

As I write this post I may seem like I'm a huge advocate of male rape. I'm not. But I am an advocate of a movie being what it is. A horror movie should be scary, a comedy should be funny, action movies should be compelling, and torture porn should be terrifying. "Live Animals" wasn't. I commend them for making a movie for $6000 (according to a poster on IMDB who claims to have worked on the film, and that budget doesn't seem too far off). The movie was boring, yes, and the acting was below average. But if it had been terrifying, if it had made me look over my shoulder before I shut off the light, then all the cheap cinematography and boring parts would be excusable.

And to me, male rape and being turned into a sex slave is more terrifying than seeing another helpless woman turned into one. One scenario is a porn video. The other one, well that makes you squirm in your seat.