SAW
(2004) ***
Saw starts with a man waking up submerged in a bathtub. He watches some luminous blue object float past his face before he understandably freaks and starts thrashing around, pulling the plug chain wrapped around his leg and draining the tub as he clambers out. When the other voice in the dark turns the lights on, the scene is set. Two men, chained by their ankles to opposite ends of the room, a bloody corpse face down on the floor between them. As the plot progresses, little clues are discovered: the instructional cassette from Jigsaw, a note hidden in a wallet, items hidden behind an "X" scrawled in luminous paint. The deal is Lawrence (played by puffy-looking Cary Elwes) has to kill Adam by 6 on the clock, or Lawrence's family will be killed. At any point either man may choose to cut himself loose by sawing through his own ankle.
From there we get the rest of the Jigsaw story, told in flashbacks. Seems he likes to stick people in dire situations so they can find if they are capable of the hideous acts of will required to escape. Soooort of....
I have a number of good and bad things to say about these movies and I'm just gonna hit them as they come. First of all, Jigsaw's a jerk! This may seem obvious, but I'm a bit put off by how much the Saw movies present him as being, well... right. Unlike most serial killers whose capers we watch, he has a philosophy and he's a talker. His traps are meant as darker, scarier versions of that scene in Fight Club where Tyler Durden threatens the 7-11 guy with death if he doesn't go fulfill his dream to be a veteranarian -- so it seems like he's helping people. And the traps are very clever, and Jigsaw himself is very clever, so he always manages to stay ahead of the cops. And while the scenarios are intriguing and his philosophizing well-written enough, his tactical success seems to imply that his points about life are also correct, and I really resent that bit of posturing.
Because he's wildly inconsistent! If he's testing people's survival instincts, he should standardize his methods. Sawing off one's own foot is a good one, and so is Amanda's test. She must have the will to cut the key from a living man's stomach or else the machine locked to her head will rip her jaw off. But the guy trapped in the razor wire maze, what does that prove? Will isn't enough with that one; what if he's just not good at mazes? What about Amanda's guy with the key in his stomach, what was his test? And take Adam, who woke up in the bathtub: we find out at the end that the luminous object that went down the drain when he woke up was the key to his ankle lock. That's not a life lesson, that's just a "nyaahh!" For that reason I like to call Jigsaw the "Why are you hitting yourself?" killer. He's a bully and a jerk.
Nevertheless, I must touch on some of the good things. For one, the infernal devices are darkly wonderful. The jaw-ripper not only performs its task well, it has a sexy-scary "heavy industry" aesthetic about it that typifies the production design of the whole series. Gorgeous stuff. Running with the Squalor vibe that Se7en made so popular is only one way Saw learns a lesson from Fincher's movie. I remember that some people reacted to Se7en and The Cell with a similar critique: that the killings were a little too sick to enjoy. The Saw series just says fuck it, let's just have a carnival sideshow of people waking up in lurid nightmare situations, usually seconds away from having to mutilate themselves. Sick? Great! Do I tune in? Yes, yes I do. In the growing Torture subgenre we're investigating, Saw stands out not for its deftness or smarts, but for its unflinching will to play out the sick scenarios of a fly-torturing fourteen-year-old.
Unfortunately, with a teenager's sloppiness. For a movie that touts "the rules" more than once, it's a bit dicey on certain basic ones. For one thing, there's a flashback in which Lawrence has a surveillance photo taken of him in a dark parking garage, but he happens not to see the flash because he's rubbing his eyes at the moment. Wait a second, the flash? What kind of snoop uses a flash? For another thing, Lawrence advises Adam to use his shirt to reach the tape recorder, yet never thinks to do the same thing when he's howlingly desperate to reach the cell phone. For yet another thing, you can't make a saw blade that will cut through a leg but not cut through a chain. Well, you could if you custom made one from aluminum, and that is something Jigsaw could do, but what happens in the movie is everyone who tries gives up after, like, ten seconds. Guys, calm down! That's not a lightsaber! If it's a standard steel sawblade, it could cut through that chain, given time. Give it a shot, you're not going anywhwere. If Cary Elwes weren't trying so hard to channel Nick Nolte after he got chunky, he might have thought of that.
But that's not even the most annoying thing. The most annoying thing is Saw's penchant for rapid, crazy montages to whip up the mood. This is true for the whole series, but it starts right here in the first one. Amanda sees her instructional videotape, the clock starts ticking, and suddenly we're treated to a nutty, sped-up circling around her while she flails around and the music cranks it up to eleven. Here's a few sample frames:
And pretty much any time we get some dire situation presented to us, we get at least twenty seconds of sharp booms and strobed images, usually super-saturated shots of the victim from a couple of different angles and some close-ups of some damn thing and a bunch of pop-flashed white frames. It's not the Blair Witch shaky cam, nor the bad narrative editing of Batman Forever, it's something else. And you guys know me, I'm a child of the Sesame Street generation, I can handle the rapid data input -- but this stuff's just crap. It's like an irritating song from the early days of sampling, going "Saw! Sa-sa-sa-Saw! It's crazy! Saw! You just c-c-can't believe it! Boom! Sa-Saw! She's got a thing on her head! Ba-boom! We're going around her! WoowoOWOWoooWOWoow! Saw!" The movie just can't get enough of itself.
Needless to say, I was tired of this rather early in the game, and I got HUGE dose of it by the end of the day. They take this technique and don't just make a meal of it, they make a friggin' multi-course banquet of it like that fat guy in Meaning of Life.
I'd seen this movie once before, and I found it pretty tedious on a second viewing. It's definitely my least favorite of the series. But I did give it three stars, because despite my griping it's fairly worthy of its popularity. I like Shawnee Smith, the actress who plays Amanda, because she was the female lead in the remake of The Blob, which is one of my favorite movies in the "nobody likes but me" category. Her wide eyes make for a perfect victim.
When Saw ends it provides us with an anticlimactic reveal made up of rapid flashback frames (Boom! Sa-Saw! This part! Then this part! Sa-sa-Saw! Remember this! Pow!) that show us the killer is...some guy so far in the background it may as well have been one of the lamps. Okaaay...
SAW II
(2005) ****
I recommend reading Summerisle's review of Saw II. I wound up agreeing with him on practically everything.
Right away Saw II is more promising than its predecessor; Jigsaw is front and center, unmasked and without any cronies fronting for him. It's strange that they had such a talented actor in that role and chose to show almost nothing of him in the first flick, but who cares, he's here now. His pale, sickly face and bored aura of self-assurance provide the perfect attitude as he tells his backstory to Detective Donnie Wahlberg. Mapping the evolution of his mania, spurred by news of his own terminal illness, fills a wide gap left by the first movie. Meanwhile, across the room the other cops watch the drama unfolding on the monitors.
What they're seeing is an undisclosed location where Detective Donnie's son and seven strangers are trapped. When the movie takes us there, we see a more complicated version of the Saw scenario unfolding: Everyone is suffering the effects of a deadly nerve agent, and syringes with the antidote are hidden around the house, along with finger-wagging cassette tapes and a variety of traps. The opening scene provided us with the nasty Death Mask test, the booby traps faced by the group are of a looser variety, not really involving tests of will as much as keeping your head and listening to the clues. Which almost nobody does. As it turns out, Jigsaw's victims do worse in groups as they do individually. Certain puzzles laid out at the start are never followed through as traps are sprung and people start turning on each other. The mounting chaos at the house is countered by Jigsaw's sly control back at his captured hideout, where events play out according to his agenda even when it the reverse looks true. The answer's there if they'd just listen to him, closely.
Not that this flick avoids all the pitfalls. Jigsaw's moral posturing seems fairly weak considering he's using several of his subjects as pawns, and there's still a lot of unjustified "nyahh!" to his shenanigans. We're still assaulted with a ton of self-agrandizing montage nonsense, especially when the action winds up back in the room from the first movie. Suddenly the strobed editing is all over us like an excited dog: "We're here! The room from Saw! Sa-sa-Saw! Boom! There's a body! And look at that! Ba-boom! Remember that?! Woo! Saw!"
And you don't often see victims that traipse so agreeably into traps. I know you can't have a horror movie without victims, but how many spreading pools of blood do you need to see before you start to, you know, learn?.
By day's end I would name Saw II as the best of the batch. Vicious in a special way, and smarter than its brothers.
SAW III
(2006) ***1/2
Our story opens with another nasty-ass "test." This guy here is charged with ripping all those rings out his body and leaving the room before a bomb goes off. It's not all that clear from the picture, but he's got a ring piercing his whole lower jaw. I don't know about you, but faced with that situation I would sit back down and pick up a magazine. I have no interest going through life without a lower jaw. I'm just saying.
See JPX's review of Saw III for further insight and the cool pictures I would've posted if he hadn't beat me to it. The best thing I found was a bunch of these posters for a Saw III tie-in blood drive. Hellooo nurse!
Not to taunt you, JPX, but this was an excellent movie to see an hour after Saw II since it picks up immediately after, where Detective Donnie applies a new solution to an earlier problem in the series. Way to go, Donnie.
Well, the terminal illness that got this saw spinning has really jacked Jigsaw up, and he's going out with a big passion play. In one room is the surgeon with the gun collar, tasked with complicated medical procedures in hardware-store conditions and a five barrel "or else" aimed at her head. Meanwhile, a man dispirited by his son's death by drunk driver proceeds through a series of tests about forgiveness, as each successive victim had a hand in the drunk driver's light sentence. I liked that; for the first time since Amanda's trial we see puzzles in which the price is the suffering of others and not one's willingness to self-mutilate. Whew! Actually, cancel that whew, these scenarios are horrible. Added to Jigsaw's vast skill at machinery, engineering and chemisty is a new arrow in the arsenal: an endless supply of rotting pigs. And the Dad's learning curve ain't that steep -- his tendency is to forgive but not quiiiite fast enough.
The other main element at play is Jigsaw's successor, none other than Amanda from that embarrassing jaw-ripping incident. I'd love to say Shawnee Smith really goes the distance when she's handed a big role, but she doesn't quite pull it off. There's a lot she can do, but she doesn't really do menacing all that well. But she looks good trying.
Saw III has got the same pros and cons as the other two. On the pro side, you have the enjoyment of artfully engineered human misery and teeth-gritting gore. Watching a man's skull cut open with Black and Decker tools might make you ask "is this scene really horror cinema, exactly?" but you can't deny the way your nose wrinkles and your fingers curl. Jigsaw remains a compelling character, even if his rulebook is a bit dodgy, and actor Tobin Bell is as creepy as ever. His resignation in the face of death lends him an almost kindly demeanor, but beneath it is undying menace.
On the con side, there's the ego thing again. They still can't get enough of their own franchise. We see flashbacks to them setting up the room from Saw #1, including details like painting the luminous X on the wall. Oh man, like I care! And the big "reveal" montage (Boom! etc. for like the thirtieth time that day) does a thing that is a HUGE pet peeve of mine. When Jigsaw's schemes are laid bare, the flashback rundown comes all the way up to stuff that happened two minutes ago. Argh! Instant flashbacks drive me crazy. They're so damn insulting.
Well, that's the Saw movies folks. Popular and a little snobby about it, but notably clever and sincerely mean. Mean like a rusty nail.
17 comments:
"For that reason I like to call Jigsaw the "Why are you hitting yourself?" killer. He's a bully and a jerk." My favorite line. Jigsaw is a jerk. How narcissistic to believe that it is up to him to teach morality, especially since some of his victims didn't really do anything bad. In SAW 3 the protagonist is placed in Jigsaw's torture maze because the protagonist has not been able overcome his grief over his 7-year old's death my a drunk driver. Why torture a guy whose already down? Jigsaw's..well..just a jerk.
Excellent series summary, by the way.
Yup. That's the definitive summary. Nicely done again.
Damnit, reading your review of SAW 3 I realize that I missed the opening scene! I thought it began with the woman and the acid jar.
Damnit!
Great prose from Octo as usual. My problem is, I just don't have the stomach for these movies and will probably never, ever see them, but, nonetheless, I'm intrigued by the puzzles. It would be nice if I could just read a list of all the Saw puzzles and how they work (and what the outcome is) without actually watching.
Octo and I discussed this recently, in the context of Se7en -- the idea being that the audience (and I) will put up with the grisly gore if it's for a reason, and John Doe provides a complely adequate rationale for us seeing what we're seeing. Of course, that's a "real movie" (if I can use this awful term in a limited way and not incur anyone's semantic wrath).
I made a Watchmen reference that nobody responded to, during the JPX Saw review: Gerald Grice and Rorschach with the, well, saw.
The "I've got a terminal disease, so I'm REALLY evil because I don't care" motif has been used elsewhere: The James Bond with Denise Richards ("World is Not Enough"? I can't remember; the Brosnan Bonds that aren't the excellent Goldeneye all blend together), and also the excellent Killing Zoe.
I am the horrorthon thread-killer. The evidence is now overwhelming.
Aww, that's not true. I was going to mention the thing I didn't get around to when you brought up Watchmen before, which is how disappointing it was that Rorschach's big defining moment involved such a blatant ripoff of a Mad Max plot device.
But see, both Max and Rorschach know that cutting off your own foot is really a deadline-related gag.
Yeah, I had the same reaction at the time! I told myself that it was possible that Alan Moore hadn't seen Mad Max. (The problem is that it actually isn't possible.)
Is there a list of Sawtraps like I asked, or do I have to politely ask for one of you gentlemen to provide one?
Okay, you asked for it. Here's a rundown of all of the traps from the Saw movies, which means SPOILERS! SPOILERS!
SUPER-MEGA SPOILERS THAT WRECK EVERYTHING!
SPOILERS! ALL THREE MOVIES HERE!
SPOILERAMALAMA!
Scenario: Man wakes up in his underwear inside a chainlink enclosure strung with razor wire. He must navigate the maze in two hours or the door to the big room in which this is happening slams shut forever.
Result: Police find his body still in the middle of maze, tangled in multiple wires. Some cuts are so deep there is stomach acid on the floor. A sped-up flashback shows the guy TOTALLY FREAKING OUT like he’s a Jacob’s Ladder demon. Not a good strategy.
Scenario: Man wakes up naked in a room lit by one votive candle. The cassette tape tells him that he’s been lethally poisoned, but the antidote is inside a safe in the middle of the room. The walls of the room are covered with bunches of numbers arrayed in a grid formation, and one of the many, many available number sequences is the combination to the safe. The man must use the candle to see the numbers and try the various combinations before the poison kills him, but carelessness with the flame will ignite the flammable jelly he’s been smeared with.
Result: Police find charred, blackened body.
Scenario: Woman wakes up tied to a chair with big device on her head. A video tape tells her that the device will open her mouth beyond its original design specifications, and shows a demonstration on a plaster head. The key to get it off is inside the stomach of her “dead cellmate.” When she struggles loose from the chair (not a problem) and stands up, it starts the timer on the device. Shortly before she makes her first cut, the man’s eyes open, revealing he’s not dead.
Result: She makes it out with seconds to spare, but kills the guy.
Scenario: Man is fastened to chair with two drills positioned to drill through his head from either side. This is in Jigsaw’s workshop, and according to Jigsaw’s “you are part of something larger than yourself” speech, the guy is a test subject. When cops reveal themselves, Jigsaw starts the machine to distract them, drills start up and begin moving inwards.
Result: Smart cop shoots both drill bits off, but moments later trips a wire and is blown away by several shotguns. Cop Danny Glover gets his throat cut by Jigsaw’s spring-loaded wrist blade but lives.
Scenario: Two men are chained to either side of a room and provided with convenient ankle saws. A dead man lies between them, the apparent victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. One man, a doctor, is tasked to kill the other by a certain deadline or else his wife and daughter will be killed. He is provided with a bullet and a cell phone that only receives calls. A camera is trained on the room, linked to a monitor in the doctor’s house where the wife and daughter are being held hostage.
Result: Wife and daughter manage to get away on their own, their kidnapper is revealed to be another Jigsaw victim who’s being compelled by slow poison to carry out the kidnapping/murder. The noise of the wife’s escape comes over the phone and inspires the doctor to saw off his foot, grab the dead guy’s gun and shoot the other guy, despite the deadline’s passing. The poisoned kidnapper shows up to shoot the doctor, but the shot, chained man is only wounded and gets up and kills the kidnapper. Doctor drags himself off to find help and is presumably unsuccessful. Corpse on floor gets up and is revealed to be Jigsaw. In third movie we discover the remaining chained man (Adam) is suffocated by Amanda as a mercy killing.
Scenario: Man wakes up in chair with double sided iron-maiden style death mask attached to him. After a short time, the front and back of the mask will close on his head and kill him with the tons of nails welded to the inside. The key has been inserted behind one of his eye sockets, and he’s provided with a scalpel, mirror and an x-ray to assist him in cutting it out of his head.
Result: He doesn’t even make the first cut, just frets until it slams shut.
Scenario: Eight people are trapped in a house and will die from poison within two hours. One dose of antidote is inside a safe in the room they start in, cassette tape gives clues to the combination and the element that connects them all.
Result: The biggest asshole of the group discovers they all have a number written on the back of their necks, he endeavors to find them all and nearly does, even going so far as to cut the skin from his own neck so he can see his number. Before he can get the last two numbers, his throat gets slashed by one of the ankle saws from the first movie.
Scenario: Still in that first room, the 8 are provided with a key but instructed not to use it on the exit door. Ignoring this, aforementioned asshole tries key in lock.
Result: Revolver rigged to lock and positioned on other side of peephole fires, fatally shooting another man who was trying to see through the peephole at the same time key is tried. Door opens automatically shortly afterward.
Scenario: Two doses of antidote are inside large industrial oven, cassette tape addresses one member of gang and reveals it was he who kidnapped the others, and mentions the second dose “comes with a price.”
Result: Kidnapper agrees to go in, put pulling on second syringe closes and locks the oven door and turns on the burners, starting at his feet and moving up. Gang frantically tries to get him out opening on other side but only his head and shoulders make it out before he’s dead. No antidotes used.
Scenario: Room has a locked door behind which there is another dose of antidote, but two minutes after entering room door will seal itself for good, key or not. In the middle of the room is a pit filled with used syringes, with the key is hidden in the pile.
Result: Asshole throws another person in the pit, she finds the key but it’s too late to open door. She receives several needle wounds but is otherwise okay.
Scenario: Box hanging in the middle of room has one antidote syringe and two holes through which one can grab it.
Result: Plunger of syringe is stuck to the floor of the box, so the first hand in pulls the needle and cylinder off of the plunger and antidote spills on the floor of the box. When victim sticks hand in other opening to investigate, she discovers both holes are equipped with a one-way blade assembly that cuts her wrists and prevents her from removing her hands. Asshole shows up shortly afterwards, but only looks at the number on her neck and then leaves.
Scenario: Eight people charged with working together to enable their survival.
Result: Not good. Three are taken down by traps, one dies from the poison, two are killed by other members of the gang. One of the remaining two is actually Jigsaw’s henchwoman/successor. And the last one…
Scenario: A cop’s son is trapped in a lethal situation with a bunch of people the cop jailed with planted evidence (that’s their connection). The architect of the drama invites the cop to talk to him for a while and eventually he’ll find his son in a safe place.
Result: The cop dispenses with chit-chat and just beats the hell out of Jigsaw, who agrees to take him to the site on the monitors, alone. It turns out the scene in the trap-house is not live but rather taped, and the son has been locked in a safe behind Jigsaw’s desk the whole time (right where the conversation was taking place). The timer that’s been counting down does not indicate when the victims die from the poison, but when the safe will open.
Scenario: Cop is chained by the ankle in the same place as Adam from the first movie and has the same choice to make involving a saw and how much he likes his foot. (End of Saw II)
Result: Thinking his son is still in jeopardy, he can’t bring himself to sever his foot but CAN bring himself to pound it with the lid from a toilet tank, bashing it into a more convenient shape for escaping. After a melee with Amanda, she leaves him for dead and later we find out Jigsaw has to “clean up.”
Scenario: Man wakes up in an abandoned school classroom with several large metal rings piercing his body. The rings are attached to chains and he must rip them out to free himself before a bomb goes off.
Result: He gets all but the last one, which is through his jaw, when the bomb goes off. The cops discover the door is welded shut and he wouldn’t have made it out anyway.
Scenario: Woman wakes up suspended in a strange device that is slowly hooking into her skin and around her ribs. The key to unlock herself is in a jar of acid right in front of her.
Result: She gets the key out but it fails to actually free her; her rib cage is violently ripped away from her body in two pieces.
Scenario: Man finds woman who refused to testify against the drunk driver who killed his son, chained naked in a freezing cold room. The key to her chains is on the wall behind the cooling pipes, reachable with some difficulty. When the man enters, it starts a mechanism that sprays the woman with water.
Result: After some bitching at her and a really sincere apology, he grabs the key but tears a hunk of skin off his cheek when it touches the cooling pipes. When he goes to free her, however, she and her chains are covered with a coating of ice.
Scenario: The judge who gave the drunk driver a light sentence is chained by his neck to the bottom of a large vat. When the man enters the room, a procession of rotting pig carcasses enters the room on hooks. They’re dropped into anassembly of buzzsaws that reduces them to stinky liquid that is then drained into the vat where the judge is, threatening to drown him in offal. The key to his chain is inside a nearby incerator with a glass door, but can only be retrieved after igniting the incinerator and burning the collection of plush animals that used to belong to the man’s dead son.
Result: He burns the toys and gets the judge out in time.
Scenario: The drunk driver himself is attached to a device like a crucifix, that when started will twist each of his limbs in succession, delivering a compound fracture. After that, his head. The key to release him is in a box nearby, rigged to a shotgun.
Result: The man grabs the key and manages to miss the gun blast, but the judge standing further away is killed. By the time the man is attempting to unlock the drunk driver, three of his four limbs have already been twisted. Then the man drops the key and the driver’s neck is broken.
Scenario: A doctor is fitted with a ring of mini-shotguns linked to Jigsaw’s heart monitor. If he flatlines, it will blow her head off.
Result: She does a decent job, but when Jigsaw talks of freeing her Amanda gets pissed and shoots her in the gut. This is right as the man enters, who we then discover is 1. the husband of the good doctor and 2. armed with the gun Jigsaw provided him somewhere in the maze. He immediately shoots Amanda in the neck. It’s revealed that the subject of this particular game was Amanda and not the doctor; he was giving her a chance to become a proper Jigsaw who actually provided their victims with a way out. Ring-guy and ribcage-woman never had a chance, which revealed the wrongness of her path.
Scenario: With Amanda dead and the doctor alive but badly wounded, Jigsaw invites the man to one final attempt at forgiveness – to forgive him, Jigsaw, and not take advantage of his bedridden condition the vast array of metal tools lying around.
Result: It seems like the man is going to forgive, but then he pulls out a motorized circular saw and cuts Jigsaw’s throat. That results the the destruction of the good doctor’s head, since between the saw’s noise and her own injuries she couldn’t warn her husband about the collar. Also, with his last breath Jigsaw plays a cassette tape that informs the man he just failed the test, the result being that now nobody alive knows where the man’s young daughter is, and she’s running out of air. The end.
My God, Octopunk, how long did that take you???
My God!!!
I mean, really!
Well, I figured after Saw Sunday I was the guy to do it. It probably took me the amount of time it takes to watch a Saw movie. Of course now Jordan says he actually wants to watch one.
Looking at this, it makes me think that Jigsaw's "to do" lists must be HUGE.
Yeah his "to do" list would be like,
1. Pick up coffee
2. Get oil change
3. Schedule a haircut
4. Build bear-trap like, head squishing device
Oh sure noooooooow Jordan wants to watch SAW now that you took all the fear out of it for him!
SAW spoiler!
I figure it's the timing that really sucks. If you miss a poisoning appointment, your victim might stroll out of your trap whistling.
(I actually found Jigsaw's proficiency with poison to be the least believable aspect of his work. Who knows that stuff?)
Yay! This is exactly what I wanted too because I DEFINITELY cannot deal with the whole torture genre and would never have seen these movies!
Thanks, Octo!
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