Review of Saw (2004) by Halfwelshman — 23 Jun 2012

Criticised for being morally bereft and for starting the "torture porn" horror movie craze though the Saw series is, this first instalment has far more to it than you might immediately realise.

While it's notorious for extreme gore, in Saw you actually see relatively little, and it rarely feels like the two protagonists (Leigh Whannell and Cary Elwes) are being put through extreme torment for the sake of it - everything that happens to them is necessary for moving the plot along.

Unlike the sequels, Saw really isn't a gruesome horror film, but is actually closer to an incredibly dark crime thriller. The Jigsaw Killer (Tobin Bell) rightly deserves his place in the movie villain hall of fame - he has a terrifying screen presence despite being only a disembodied voice for the majority of the film, and his character, a psychotic vigilante driven by a twisted moral code is far more layered and entertaining than the average film murderer.

James Wan and Leigh Whannell's story is deceptively simple, but through several clever and unexpected plot twist and some fairly explicit political subtext, the narrative becomes memorable. Saw also offers you one of the most brilliant and shocking final scenes in film history, something none of the inferior sequels even came close to replicating.

The set pieces are also far more effective and terrifying than any we see in subsequent instalments, chiefly due to the fact that they are kept strikingly simple, and the schizophrenic editing hides the goriest visuals, allowing your own imagination to fill in the blanks, which is always a reliable tool to fall back on in horror.

The first act of the film is a little slow, and I will concede that the film's underlying message, if there really is one, about the failures of the American justice system and worldwide moral decline, is approached in a rather heavy-handed manner by the filmmakers.

The biggest crime the film commits, though, is that it spawned so many underwhelming sequels. Still, in this first chapter of an increasingly tired and formulaic franchise packs a real punch thanks to some good writing, taught and tense plotting and an abundance of energy.

Many compare the film unfavourably to Seven, but despite the undeniable similarities in plot, I'd take the stripped-back, far less pretentious Saw over David Fincher's over-compensatory effort any day.