Review of Saw (2004) by Beth M — 21 Feb 2013

"Most people are so ungrateful to be alive." - Jigsaw Killer.

Saw is a gory, and really disturbing psychological thriller that actually teaches an important life lesson. It teaches you to appreciate your life. What the Jigsaw killer does is he goes around kidnapping people who he thinks doesn't appreciate their lives, or whom he thinks is wasting their life. So he puts them physical and or psycholigical torture. His traps he refers to as "games," and when the person wakes up there is either a tape or a video their telling them "I would like to play a game." He then tells them what he wants them to do and how to survive. His traps are escapable, because he wants you to survive so you can come out of it with a greater appreciation for life. He has picked people for his games who have tried suicide, and who have been junkies. That is the concept of the film. The first film inspired six others, which weren't as good. The third one was just as good, but that was the only one. The film is interesting, but a twisted one.

Amanda (Shawnee Smith) was the only one to ever survive one of his games. She woke up in a chair with a metal trap around her face. It is known as the reverse bear trap. Instead of closing like a bear trap it opens. Once she sets the timer off she has one minute to get the key for it or it will open and rip her mouth open, and kill her. The video she watched had a really freaky puppet with a spooky voice that told her all of this. The puppet told her that the key is in the stomach of her dead cellmate. She was the junky he tested. When she found the body he opened his eyes and she realized he was still alive and she had to cut him open. They don't show his stomach being cut open because they didn't have the budget to make it look great. The film doesn't make anything way too graphic in my opinion because of a really low budget, which is good because it leaves it to your imagination. She did win and the puppet came out on a tricycle and told her "Congratulations you are still alive. Most people are so ungrateful to be alive, but not you. Not anymore." In the third film they tell you what happened with her after that. That is the story of the one girl who lived. But that is not a spoiler of the end; it is a flashback of an investigation that Doctor Gordon was a part of.

Doctor Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) and Adam (Leigh Whannell) wake up in a disgusting disused bathroom with their ankles chained to pipes, and they have no idea where they are and how they got there. The also don't know each other. The whole film is about them trying to figure out why they are there, and how they got there. There is a cop named David Tapp (Danny Glover) spying on Doctor Gordon's house. They both find tapes in their pockets, and they are both given a different set of instructions. Adam must escape the bathroom by six o'clock or he will be left there to rot. Doctor Gordon must kill Adam before six o'clock or else his family will die. It is set up so that only one of them can live, and even if they do their jobs they probably won't live. The film goes back into their lives, the life of the cop, and flashbacks of the investigations of the Jigsaw murders.

What makes this good is that it is more of an intellectual horror film. Some people just say it is stupid and gory but those people don't pay attention to the plot at all. It is a very thought provoakitive film, that is suspenseful, and scary at certain times. That is why I like this film. I showed it to my Dad, and he didn't think he would like it and he thought it was really good, and he usually hates gory stuff. Well I know my Dad well enough to be able to tell what he will like, so I knew he would like this.

The guy who plays Adam, his name is Leigh Wannell and he wrote the screenplay for this film, and he came up with the whole idea by himself. He and James Wan were right out of film school and looking to do a film together. Whannell came up with an idea that two guys would wake up in a room and not know where they are. The idea was made so the film would be cheap and easy to make. The idea of the Jigsaw killer came from when Whannell was working a terrible summer job and getting headaches from it. He went to go see a doctor and started to worry and think, "What if they tell me I have a tumor, and I don't have that much more time to live?" Then he realized that he should make a killer that is in that condition. He got the title when he was writing a lot of words down and then he wrote down "Saw" in a red ink and he thought it looked so scary because it looked like blood. It kind of shows how certain things happen for a reason. He then wrote a screenplay, which had a few flaws but was still really good. Then James Wan made the film in only 18 days. That is how this film was created. When it came out it was so big that they decided to make more. He would write the screenplays for the next two and produce the others. The mastermind behind the series was the dumbest character in the movie. The films dropped off once he stopped writing them. The 2nd one was a huge drop off from this one, but I think he figured out what was wrong with it, and he wrote a screenplay for the third one, which was better then this one. Whannell in my opinion has a twisted mind, but a creative one.

Don't read this unless you have seen it and don't want to see the rest of the films.

-----Spoilers-----.

After Doctor Gordon crawled out of the bathroom he found a steam pipe, which he used to cauterize his wound. They show that in Saw 7. He ended up becoming one of Jigsaws accomplices, and helped him with every game that involved surgery. You have to watch 6 more movies after this just to know weather or not he survived. The series is amazing the way they are all tied together, and they are tricky so you do have to watch them all. It is like an addicting TV show. It explains things about everybody's lives in different films, and explains things that went unexplained in one film in another. A trilogy that only had a few good ones, but is incredibly well done. The greatest horror series for sure.