LOS ANGELES  When Andrew van den Houten got a letter two weeks ago rejecting his request for Michigan public money to help finance his latest horror movie, “The Woman,” it came with an admonition about the state’s good name.

“This film is unlikely to promote tourism in Michigan or to present or reflect Michigan in a positive light,” wrote Janet Lockwood, Michigan’s film commissioner. Ms. Lockwood particularly objected to “this extreme horror film’s subject matter, namely realistic cannibalism; the gruesome and graphically violent depictions described in the screenplay; and the explicit nature of the script.”

The easy money is not quite so easy any more.

Among the states that began underwriting film and television production with heavy subsidies over the past half-decade  44 states had some sort of incentives by last year, 28 of them involving tax credits  at least a handful are giving new scrutiny to a question that was politely overlooked in the early excitement: What kind of films are taxpayers paying for?

Less than two years ago, Mr. van den Houten became one of the first to take advantage of Michigan’s generous subsidy, which pays for up to 42 percent of a movie’s cost, when he made “Offspring,” a cannibalism-themed horror picture that was later distributed by the Ghost House Underground direct-to-video line and has been showing on NBC Universal’s Chiller TV network.