Director: James Wan
Rating: 5 out of 10
Filmmakers are constantly asking the audience to suspend disbelief in order to enjoy their stories. It's part of the process. It's also the funniest thing to hear a supporter of a film throw in your face if you try to point out a few inaccuracies and shoot holes in a less than cogent story. Now, I'm a cynic; it's just how I am. I thirst for an intelligent story that makes sense without my having to discard my natural cynicism, because that is an impossibility. So the movies that aggravate me the most are the ones that rely solely on the suspension of disbelief in order to be palatable. Let me just tell you this: I won't do it. Now I'm not referring to certain supernatural aspects of films, especially horror films, because the audience knows that there's no such thing as an unkillable man, or a man that kills you in your dreams, or shape-shifting aliens. But, when the filmmakers try to ground their film in reality and take short-cuts with the logic of the plot in order to force the issue, I take issue.
I'm beginning this review in such a manner because Saw is such a frustrating film for me. They came up with a pretty damn good hook for a horror film: a "killer" puts people in escapable death-traps with the intent of changing their life through the harrowing ways they would have to partake in to escape with their lives intact. There's a far far far superior film that used a similar premise to a much better effect: Se7en. Just a recommendation: if you think Saw is good and you haven't seen Se7en, go see it immediately. The problem I have with this film is in the execution of the story. It just tries too damn hard to unsettle or make you feel trapped. There's an exchange at the beginning of the film shortly after the two main characters wake up incarcerated in a needlessly dingy bathroom that just irks me so much. The doctor, played by Cary Elwes, points out that the clock on the wall looks brand new, to which the other character replies, "So?" The doc's retort being something along the lines of "Since the clock is brand new, someone obviously put it there because they wanted us to know what time it is." Obviously, doc. No, I'm sorry, that stupid, contrived exchange simply doesn't work for me. No human being would ever say that, but they say it here because the filmmakers are trying to spoon-feed you this vibe that EVERYTHING in the film is there for a reason. Do you expect me to believe that you would wake up chained to a rusty pipe in an unfamiliar room and be like "Hey, that clock on the wall looks new"? Sorry, try again.
I had only watched the movie one time before this and I wasn't a huge fan since it lacked any logical threading. So this time I was hoping to enjoy it more, seeing as how everyone is a fan of the series. After about 30 minutes I took out a piece of paper and started listing the things that aggravated me about the film. Before I knew it I had a list of 9 things, lovingly titled "Reasons Why Saw Sucks". After a while they start putting things in the film just to make it work, not because it makes sense. There's one scene in particular with a few issues. When the two detectives discover the hideout of Jigsaw, they find a creepy lab with all kinds of weird stuff laying around. One of the things in the room is a man strapped to a seat with a drill mounted a few inches away on either side of his head. Presumably, this is another one of his death traps, although curiously it's the only one that's in his own lair (hmmm....) The detectives sneak around for a few minutes before the man of the house comes home, strangely cloaked in a boxers robe. And why is he wearing this? Well, so the filmmakers won't have to show Jigsaw's face, of course. They couldn't find a more conspicuous way to hide his face?? Who the hell wears a hooded robe around their own home?? After the detectives pull their guns on our killer, he manages to set the drill-trap in motion to distract one of the detectives. After a minute or so, the cop shoots off the drill bits, thus rendering the trap useless. But, just perfect for Jigsaw to try to escape. Now, the question must be asked: why was the drill-trap there in the first place? The guy has no feasible means of escaping it. He's also the only one who doesn't get his orders stricly from that creepy doll with the bulls-eye cheeks. So, it's perfectly safe to make the assumption that the drill-trap was there solely as a plot device to make it so there could be some kind of stand-off between our detectives and the killer. Of course, the inclusion of the trap allows him to escape as well. How convenient.
I can't do it, folks. I need cohesion in my films. The picture feels genuinely dirty and grimy, and really gives off a more disturbing vibe than a scary one. It's gory and morally depraved, which is proably all they wanted to accomplish anyway. They just took on too much of an ambitious project and were not equipped to deliver on the clever premise. And I've seen two of the sequels, they only get worse as they go on.
Next: Halloween II (2009)
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