Let the games begin - 'Saw' Review
It's a bit odd to say that the thing I liked best about Saw was that there was true suffering in it rather than detached horror movie gore, but that was the case with this movie. I am reminded of some of Wes Craven's early films like The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes which, like Saw, were essentially about people doing horrible things to other people. It's a lofty effort for a couple of first time filmmakers and is very good as a debut horror/thriller/crime film, earning it the right to gain recognition from fans of Seven and The Silence of the Lambs, to which it's routinely compared. The problem is that those films never stop being interesting, while Saw makes almost no sense at all on a second viewing.I remember one of the supplemental documentaries I saw on the DVD for The Sixth Sense, in which M. Night Shyamalan explained that they went to great lengths to make sure that they were making the movie honestly, that you could go back after you knew about the ending and see that the movie still made sense. Not this movie, man! One of the things that I hate the most is when movies deliberately mislead the audience to get scares or to obscure an otherwise predictable ending. I won't say that the ending is predictable (it is, in fact, by far the best part of the whole movie), but they really pulled out all the stops in the misleading department!
Adam (Leigh Whannell, also one of the film's writers) and Dr. Gordon (Cary Elwes) wake up to find themselves locked in a filthy restroom, each chained to oppositing walls and with a dead body on the floor between them holding a gun in one hand and a tape recorder in the other.
They each have tapes in their pockets, and once Adam gets a hold of the tape recorder (by using his shirt to help him reach it, and at Dr. Gordon's suggestion. This becomes important later), they listen to the two tapes and are given instructions by Jigsaw, the killer. Adam is a voyeuristic photographer and his job in Jigsaw's game is to prevent his own death, while Dr. Gordon's job is to kill Adam or his wife and daughter, who are being held captive at gunpoint by a creepy-looking hospital orderly named Zap, will be killed and he'll be left there to die.Thus begins a lengthy series of ever more complicated events set up by Jigsaw which are convenient for a structured screenplay but make no sense in reality. It should be noted that horror films like Saw are not designed to withstand the judicious application of logic, but I tend to prefer movies where logic isn't thrown so wantonly out the window.
[caption id="attachment_61469" align="alignright" width="265" caption="Jigsaw's mascot."]
[/caption]Nevertheless, the movie does, after all, score high on that morbid entertainment scale on which horror films are generally rated, despite only making sense for one viewing. Then again, why would you want to watch a movie like this more than once?
Because of the shock of what happens at the end of the move, for example, you may have forgotten that Zap, the hospital orderly, at one point holds a stethoscope to the daughter's chest while he points a gun at her mother's head, listening as the child's heartbeat speeds up in fear. What the hell is that? Kind of cancels out some of the sympathy you're expected to feel for him later in the movie, I should think.
Then there was the issue of the objects just out of reach. Early in the film, it is Dr. Gordon that tells Adam to take off his shirt and use it to reach the tape recorder in the man's hand in the middle of the room. Later, Dr. Gordon finds himself unable to reach the ringing cell phone when his wife is calling, so he takes off his shirt and…uses it as a tourniquet to cut his foot off. What?? Given that the phone was about 8 inches out of his reach on linoleum, he may have been able to save his foot had he done the exact thing he suggested to Adam earlier. He must have been under a lot of stress.
But this comes from a good scene early in the movie where Adam finds the two saws and tosses one to Dr. Gordon and they both start sawing frantically at the chains around their ankles. Adam breaks his saw and Gordon soon gives up, realizing that it's not the chains the killer wants them to cut through, it's their feet.
[caption id="attachment_61470" align="alignleft" width="350" caption="Come on man, do the shirt thing! You were just talking about it!"]
[/caption]Reminds me of a great short story by Stephen King called "Survivor Type" where a man is stranded on a desert island and soon finds himself with a badly fractured ankle and very, very little to eat.
All in all I enjoyed the movie, it had a good surprise ending despite the fact that the path leading up to it was ultimately so ham-handed and clumsily manufactured. It is an entertaining horror film, not a great one. Cary Elwes provides a bit of star power, but first time director James Wan manages to coax from him what is by far the worst performance of his career, it's even worse than Liar Liar. If there's one thing I learned from this movie, it's that Cary Elwes can NOT cry on film. WOW. Maybe that's why he was so perfect in The Princess Bride, because Wesley was completely devoid of all emotion for most of the film.
Whatever the case, this is still an interesting film, and far better than most of the horror films that come out these days. Fans of the great thrillers like Seven and The Sixth Sense may find themselves unimpressed if you go into it expecting something of the same caliber, but horror fans are sure to get a kick out of it. At least the first time.
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