It's the up-close slicing off of heads while the blood spatters the camera (or the kid twitches in seisure and the pool grows around him) that I find offensive.

That sounds much like my reaction to The Patriot -- I liked the movie as a drama, even if it was terribly overwrought, and I really liked Luci -- er, Colonel Tavington. OTOH, I did *not* appreciate the close-up of the cannonball taking off some guy's head, or the other cannonball rolling along and removing some other guy's leg, or the *slow-motion* scene in which the very likeable preacher is shot in the chest and blood spurts away from his body in a fountain. Thanks, but yuck.