The Hateful Eight: 8 Reasons It's Quentin Tarantino's Worst Film
4. The Violence Is Unimaginative
Thats not the situations in which the violence occurs (though they too are rather insipid), but rather the actual violence, the way it is rendered on screen. Tarantino has always been a master at producing inventive, subversive instances of violence, upending our expectations so that we dont always see what we think we see. Think the adrenaline shot in Pulp Fiction, where we never actually see the needle pierce Mias breastplate, only the reaction to it. Or, conversely, think the Crazy 88 action sequence from Kill Bill Vol.1, where the violence is concentrated in such a way that it actually becomes kind of funny. There are literally gallons of blood on display, but by presenting the gore as overly grotesque and ridiculous, Tarantino ensures that the spraying arteries and lost limbs do not become stomach-churning overkill. The Brides line, "leave your limbs, they belong to me now", is a reinforcing footnote to this notion. The Hateful Eight is also replete with excessive blood-and-guts, but here it feels like an inferior treading of Kill Bills waters. The hardwood floors are sprayed on, vomited on, and covered in viscera by the time of the films close, but the difference here is that it feels like a cheap way to install some shock-factor into what is essentially a chamber-play, rather than a distinct, reasoned, artistic decision. Moreover, the violence just doesnt fit the theme. Westerns are rarely overly bloody, and gunshots tend to leave only smoking holes in the bodies they end up in. Here, though, the violence is closer to early David Cronenberg or Sam Raimi, especially the latter when you consider The Hateful Eight's similarities to Evil Dead II.
