“I hate these movies. I won’t see these movies. Never saw Saw or its sequels, never will. I’m not impressed with the ‘quality’ of the gore or the ‘wit’ of the filmmaking. I’m not enjoyably scared; I’m horrified, and not in the way horror fans get off, groaning and screaming with pack-mentality excitement. Instead, my horror is one of disturbance and anger: Who makes this vile crap?” — Entertainment Weekly critic Lisa Schwarzbuam in a column not yet on the magazine’s website, but quoted by Moving Picture Blog’s Joe Leydon.
See? Schwarzbaum has provided the thin end of the wedge. If Schwarzbaum can say “no, I won’t see these films” and get respect for this (she has mine), how can anyone point to another journalist who says “no, I will not sit through another Peter Jackson/Michael Bay/Roger Kumble/Catherine Zeta Jones/Brett Ratner/fill-in-the- blank film” and call his/ner prohibitive feelings neurotic or unprofessional or over the line? Everyone has their own lines in the sand. These are extreme and scary times. If you can’t say “absolutely no” to something or someone, what good are you?