Hostel (2005)

You'd have to be a huge fan of torture porn to excuse the other 85 minutes of this laboured and terribly acted 94-minute exercise in bad taste, and not even notorious torture porn director Eli Roth seems able to commit to his 'The Most Dangerous Game in a Slovakian hostel' story because no sooner is the full extent of the depravity befalling his backpacking homophobes revealed, he alleviates the horror with some gross-out and surgically impossible nonsense.

★☆☆☆☆

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Big Bad Wolves (2013)

This convoluted thriller from Israel is about a suspected serial killer of children being tortured in a basement by the father of one of the victims, which may not sound funny, but black humour and a constant witty 'turning of the tables' will keep you watching through grim torture until a final, sadly unrewarding, meaningless revelation.

★★☆☆☆

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7 Days (2010)

The schedule of torture inflicted by a father against the prime suspect in his daughter's murder lasts seven days and unless you are "into" torture porn - chain floggings, a Misery-style hobbling, taunts with a shotgun, and then some - the only thing that might keep you watching through the depravity of this Canadian horror-thriller is the hope that something interesting might happen on Day 7.

★☆☆☆☆

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The Railway Man (2013)

An Australian movie, The Railway Man tells the true story of a traumatised train-obsessed former British soldier's modern-day encounter with a Japanese Kempeitai interpreter who formed part of the team that tortured him after his capture in Japan-occupied Singapore during World War II, and while the realtime story minus flashbacks is temporally slight, the build up to it is gruelling and engrossing and when redemption of a sort comes, is very emotional.

★★★☆☆

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Prisoners (2013)

Elaborately detailed, harrowing child abduction thriller with points of difference that rise it above other thrillers of its kind, but like another of Denis Villeneuve's movies, Incendies, this one, once it is over, leaves you wondering about the purpose of such a grandly staged but grim little world.

★★★☆☆

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Funny Games (2007)

Michael Haneke displays his penchant for themes grim beyond belief with this rivetting story of torture for kicks, with the main antagonist, one of a pair of odd young men terrorizing a family, breaking the fourth wall to torture viewers with fleeting glimpses of American movie hope.

★★★★☆

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