philosoraptor42

Saw (2004)
imdb link
One-line synopsis: With a dead body laying between them, two men wake up in the secure lair of a serial killer who's been nicknamed "Jigsaw". The men must follow various rules and objectives if they wish to survive and win the deadly game set for them.
Genre: Crime/Horror/Mystery/Thriller

So, the (by now, surely) classic original "torture porn" movie. It didn't really involve the graphic violence and gore that I was expecting. It also seemed to be very strongly influenced by David Fincher's "Seven". There's the same dingy settings, the police investigation, but the major link is the central premise: A serial killer who uses special traps to trick or punish his victims.

Still, early on we hear the element that makes "Jigsaw" stand apart from the 'seven sins' obsessed murderer in "Seven". Jigsaw isn't really a murderer at all. As far as the police can tell, he's never actually murdered anyone. That said, if I leave a bomb in your house on a timer and then tell you about it, I reckon I'd still be guilty of murder if you ended up not leaving the house before it explodes. As such, when the trap involves strapping a potentially lethal mechanism to someone's head first, I think that really challenges the "technically not a murderer" argument. Still, that's definitely an ambiguity we didn't have with "Seven".

Not your average kidnapping....

There are a few points where the transitions between scenes seem to be done in a way that's intended to be cool, but overall the filming style is a little cheesy. I never thought I'd say this, but Saw is actually cheesy horror fun. It's not actually the 'sit in your seat feeling sick' film that I expected.

Still, the logic of "Saw" is a little convoluted. The "he wants us to saw through our feet" line (from the trailer) comes fairly early on, but no one then acts on it. The order in which people act feels a little random sometimes and towards the end people seem to have already forgotten their old tricks. (Early on they realise that you can use your shirt to whip things a little closer to you. By the end, a character seems to strangely forget this.) There are some aspects which acted as fridge logic, so when I went away I thought "hang on!", but there were plenty of other points where I recognised straight away that things didn't make sense.

Is that mechanism really so sturdy that an onlooker couldn't knock it down or stop it working? Really?

Apparently the whole puzzle is still going on six movies later, but when it was so mixed-up in the first film I hate to think how dodgy things might have got in the substantially lower rated sequels.

Best thing about this film? Danny Glover. Danny Glover is both able to embrace the silly factor of the movie while keeping up some serious proper actor gravitas. He not only pulled me in, but helped me to accept the shlocky nature of this film. The acting isn't bad in this film, but Danny Glover captures the mood and I think the film really needed him to be included in the cast in order to make this work.

"I'm too old for this s**t, but I can still kick your ass"

Saw was a perfectly adequate cheesy horror film, so long as you don't expect too much. It's basically a rather naff attempt to recapture the thrills of "Seven" and while it fails, it manages to come up with a few little tricks of its own.