With a dead body laying between them, two men (Leigh Whannell, Cary Elwes) wake up in the secure lair of a serial killer who's been nicknamed "Jigsaw" by the police because of his unusual calling card.
You Always Remember Your First
Lots of things are scary, but what's the scariest? Is it scarier to turn on a horror movie, or the local news and see what took place just two blocks away from your house? Real life, when you think about it, is a scary place full of dangers and threats left and right. What's scariest, is what's real. This is perhaps one of the things that makes Saw so frightening and shocking: The events taking place are completely plausible and completely within the boundaries of reality. When you think about people being inspired to go out and kill, you better pray that people like that don't see this movie...
The main villain goes by the name "Jigsaw" (Tobin Bell), and Jigsaw's victims are kidnapped, fitted with horrific devices and placed in dark situations that require morbid and horrific solutions. The only thing that's more horrific than the way out of the trap, is what happens when the victim fails to escape. These traps offer incredible tension, watching these scared individuals scrambling in pure terror to get out alive as the timer tick-tocks to their doom. But the traps are more than that: they bear some symbolism to their captor, like a physical rendition of whatever plagued them and made them into who they are. Thus, becoming just as much a physical obstacle as an internal one. This is the true struggle that the characters face, and when they can't defeat their inner demons, they are put out of their misery.
Jigsaw - Villain or Just Plain Misunderstood?
This is all part of Jigsaw's philosophy. Tobin Bell dwarfs any other person he shares a screen with in this movie. Tobin Bell's performance is compelling, maybe even more so when he's talking to people who aren't stuck in Jigsaw's deathtraps. His character is so unique and different to what most movie antagonists are, especially in horror. The villains are always a monster or a force of evil, bent on slaying for revenge, their own sick pleasure or they can't help themselves. But with Saw, it's debatable if Jigsaw is even the villain! He only abducts the people that he sees as morally corrupt, wasting their lives and hurting others, and wants to make them into better people. There's no denying that he takes things to a rather dramatic and extreme end, but the law only goes so far and yet, robberies, murderers and rapists continue to breed in numbers. By going outside the law, Jigsaw hopes to strike fear into the evildoers of the world and bring justice to the world. But is it true justice? Or justice only because everyone is frozen in fear?
The victims he chooses, particularly the main two the movie focuses on, are also morally debatable. Adam's deplorable life-style of ruining people's lives for money, Dr. Gordon's supposed affair, but they're going to have to put their heads together and cooperate if they want to live. Danny Glover and Ken Leung as the police officers are really strong supporting leads, as they try desperately to discover where Jigsaw's latest victims are located. But again, no one holds a candle to Tobin Bell. They all behave in a realistic, gritty world, shot with a fantastic visual style. The fog and the use of lighting to intimidate and creep into people's insecurities is so subtle, it's almost a thing of beauty to experience. When the screen isn't covered in blood to cover it, this is a very cool looking movie.
When the movie first came out, it was rated NC-17, and had to be toned down to get the R rated version you see on the DVD. So if you seat yourself down to a viewing of Saw and find it's horrifying and making you sick, just remember: It could be worse.
Saw is 5 Reverse Bear Traps out of 5.
12 days until Halloween!
- Directed by James Wan
- Written by James Wan and Leigh Whannell
- Starring Leigh Whannell, Cary Elwes, Tobin Bell, Danny Glover, Ken Leung, Dina Meyer, Michael Emerson, Shawnee Smith
- Rated R for strong grisly violence and language
- Running time: 103 minutes
- Available on Netflix DVD Queue
Theatrical trailer
Trailer provided by Lions Gate Films
Caleb Laulusa - I began writing video game reviews for an international website that sadly, went under before any of my work was published. I also found ...
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