Slash Film
This article contains mild spoilers for "The Phoenician Scheme."
Ever since the fall of the Hays Code, violence has become the most common (and commonly accepted) transgressive element in American cinema. Where sexual content is still constantly avoided or diminished (sometimes for good reasons, oftentimes for bad ones), general audiences have been trained not to blink an eye at a lot of blood being shed. Despite the common appearance of violence in cinema, most films have a rationale for its inclusion: either they're using violence as a fantastical element, or they're emphasizing its effects to raise dramatic stakes, or to horrify, and so on.
Yet while numerous movies draw particular attention to their violent aspects, there are relatively few that can maintain a consistent level of s