Harefooted Halloween: Saw 1-7 (I-VII)

What I Liked: The plot twists are crazy and keep you on your toes.

Almost all of the death traps are cleverly designed.  They’re meant to teach either the victim or someone the victim knows a lesson.  There’s a supposed defect that this person possesses and the trap centers around that so if they survive they will emerge “rehabilitated”.

John “Jigsaw” Kramer (Tobin Bell (In the Line of Fire)) is a better character than he initially seems.  His life philosophy is totally out of whack which causes him to judge every person on the planet.  He came up with these games to force people to cherish their lives and to truly value what they do have and not take it for granted.  He’s making the world a better place in his view.  He doesn’t rank up there with the all time greats like The Joker or Dracula or the T-1000 or nothin’ but I’m comfortable throwing him in with Tony Montana from Scarface, Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs and Owen Shaw from Fast and the Furious 6.

But you know Jigsaw ought to take a look in the mirror because he generally wants his victims to cherish life more but what’s he done?  All of his time is devoted to tracking others, learning their backgrounds, devising and building traps for them and evading the police.  How is this sonuvabitch cherishing life?  He’s a workaholic.  But maybe that’s his game.  His punishment for not relishing life is he’s doomed himself to many years of being a super villain.

What I Didn’t Like: Pondering the lunacy of each death trap in your head is one thing but to actually see them in action is really horrible to witness.  This kinda gross out shit is not my cup of tea and the Saw films do not hold back on the gore one iota.  Every bone crunch, eye pierce, limb sever and head smash is put on full bloody display for your pleasure/displeasure.

It’s not just the traps though, in III there’s a rough surgery scene where a doctor has to remove part of Jigsaw’s skull in his dirty warehouse lair in order to relieve the pressure on his brain.  And part IV opens with a full blown autopsy.  So there’s surgical procedural shit for you to squirm over too.

All of the sequels fetishize the shit out of the first film.  They all refer back to it in one way or another like it was so genius.  Want to know what happens before, during and after every moment of the original?  Well don’t worry they’ll tell you.  Guys, enough with the reverse bear trap that rips your jaws apart and that grimy bathroom.  They were neat but not worth going back to over and over.

I absolutely hate the way these movies are edited.  It’s really only the trap scenes (although that does make up the bulk of the running time…) where the footage is sped up and the camera is moving all around usually in a circular pattern.  On top of this there are a millions cuts with various angles and shots all spliced together into one giant mess.  This was an attempt to make you feel panicked like the victims but it looks so fucking bad and dated.  It’s annoying because the victim is trying to work their way through the trap and the editor is losing his shit, trying his hardest to ruin the tension.  At least VI and VII (3D: The Final Chapter) have almost none of this garbage in them so the series improved in that respect.  Strangely enough the director of those two, Kevin Greutert, was the editor for Saws I-V.

To stay with the editing for a minute in parts II-IV there were some instances where scenes looked like they blended into each other.  For example two people are struggling, they smash into a mirror and through the mirror is the next scene in a completely different location with different characters and everything.  These transitions were all done for real apparently and not with computers.  On paper they sound cool as hell but in reality they’re amazingly distracting and confusing because it looks too much like what it really is, a film crew going from one set to another that was built right next to it on a soundstage.  They come off as breaking the fourth wall which certainly doesn’t fit in these pictures.  So faux editing didn’t work out here but I wonder if this has been done, either successfully or unsuccessfully, in other films.  Anyone know?

Overall Impressions: Initially I had intended to do a separate write up for each Saw movie but after number III I realized that was going to be pointless, redundant and boring.  All of the entries in the series are pretty equal and follow the same formula.  I can’t even say that one had better plot twists or death traps than another.  That’s how remarkably even they all are.  So it’s better to talk about them as a whole than to dissect each entry.

The first picture however is the most different.  Shockingly it might be the worst one and that’s mostly because of potential.  James Wan and Leigh Whannell didn’t have the discipline to stick to two guys chained up in a room trying to figure out what the fuck is going on and how to get out of there.  It could’ve been done like a great play but instead they show Jigsaw’s other traps, weak police investigation and backstory that isn’t fleshed out enough.  Going for all of this magnifies how much they stretched the budget (around a mil) and gives the whole thing a somewhat cheap feel.  In fact time and money was so tight Wan couldn’t do rehearsals, was only able to get a few takes of each scene, in some cases was missing shots entirely and had to cobble together the final product with what he had on hand.

I mean I’m glad Wan and Whannell were able to finish the film and that it became a huge horror franchise that put the two of them on the map, especially Wan, but the film isn’t very good.  There are good ideas in it but it doesn’t come together.  It was the hardest installment to get through because it’s not very fun.  The tone is more serious than the rest and it tries to tell a story bigger than what it could really deliver.  That’s why smaller and more intimate would’ve been the better way to go.  They should’ve kept it in the disgusting bathroom and see how these two characters cope with the situation.

Saw may have laid the groundwork for what would be the two longstanding trademarks of the series: inventive death traps and plot twists, but part II sets up the formula for all the others that came after it.  You got a main game that involves numerous traps, the cops investigate the current game or a previous game which leads them to the current one, and a plot twisty backstory gets filled in about John Kramer whether it be what triggered him to become a serial killer, how he knows the chosen victims, who his coconspirators are, etc.

And sure the one thing anyone remembers about a Saw picture are the off the wall traps but those are beside the point for me.  I’m not into torture porn and the Saws are all-stars in that subgenre.  They execute this aspect well and deliver in spades all of the nasty shit they promise (sometimes more, like the surgery stuff).  But it’s not the most interesting thing.

For my money the plot twists are what makes these films worth watching.  When you string them all together it’s way more like seasons of a TV show than movie sequels.  None, with the arguable exception of the original, are self-contained.  Every movie introduces a new amendment that changes everything, and I do mean literally everything, that came before it.  The writers, which were not totally consistent from film to film, magically made it seem like all seven pictures were thought out ahead of time.  The twists aren’t intelligent exactly (Jigsaw ends up having too many accomplices for instance) but they’re so damn fun when they’re revealed.  Like any good TV show all the characters are related to each other in some way to keep the shocks coming and naturally it’s never in the way you think.  So with how these movies are constructed you can’t skip around.  You have to watch them in proper sequence to understand what the fuck is going on.  Again, like a TV show.  And I gotta say it’s really funny to me that the absolute dumbest plot twist of the whole thing is the very last one in the series.  How I would love to talk about it but I can’t.  You’ll just have to see them all, sorry.

But seriously folks this franchise is fucking stupid.  Nothing really makes any sense.  Jigsaw’s games, traps and grand scheme are all so goddamn convoluted you have to suspend your disbelief to a real high level and indefinitely.  Every single element down to the minutest detail goes precisely how Jigsaw planned.  Nothing ever breaks, gets sidestepped or defeated.  All victims play along with the games too.  Understandably you wouldn’t have a very exciting movie if the person refused to play and simply laid down to die or broke down part way through giving in to their inevitable death.  The victims continued to flabbergast me by devotedly taking Jigsaw’s challenges head on after a brief moment of hesitation.  They chop their own arm off or yank their own teeth out or bring someone else to their demise with such fervor it’s comical.  And no one passes out or throws up, they all take it like true champs.  Jesus.

These pictures are a little like Se7en in that you have a bad guy judging society and passing out a punishment befitting the victim.  The difference is Se7en focuses on the police investigation while the Saws center on the bad guy and his motivations.  In Se7en John Doe was straight up killing people though.  Well I guess except for the pride victim where she could’ve phoned for help if she could live with herself being disfigured.  Jigsaw usually (but not always) gives his victims a way to survive.  Plus Se7en is smart, the Saws are not.

Unlike Se7en though the Saws get very preachy.  The “crimes” of the chosen victims are things like denying health insurance, becoming a fraud to gain fame and fortune, being a drug addict, being a drug dealer, recklessly lending money to those who can’t afford it and etc.  The writers get on their high horse to both expound to the audience that this is wrong and to take pleasure in literally gutting those they deem to be the scum of society.  Betcha didn’t think the Saws were so political.  Holy shit are they.

Look, I’m not sure if I recommend these.  On one hand they’re hard to sit through because of the carnage but on the other hand they go down like candy because the stuff beside the traps is entertaining and legitimately unpredictable.  It’s all absurd though.  This ain’t like the Halloweens or the Nightmares or Fridays where there’s a supernatural element you can fall back on.  This shit is supposed to take place in the real world with no help from Satan or anyone else.  But for me that adds to how stupidly enjoyable they are.  Hell, I watched the first five in one day!  That’s how easy they are.  What helps tremendously is each installment is basically one long finale.  There’s thirty mins of setup and then the next hour is all meat of someone working through a game, the cops closing in on their target and flashbacks filled to the brim with fucking staggeringly idiotic (and great) plot twists.  Oh there’s also tons of yelling and screaming so I hope you’re up for that too.

I know this comes off like I’m a big fan of the Saws but I think I just happen to get to them at the right time in my life.  Forget the torture porn shit (I think Martyrs (2008) might be the only one in that category I really kinda like), it’s the other stuff I’m on board with.  If the only thing they changed were not showing the death traps in action and only the aftermath then I think the series might’ve been even more popular and it would’ve made for an excellent TV show.

So in the end they made seven of these things seven years in a row.  That’s impressive.  And now they’re coming out with a new one, seven years later.  I guess the studio got the seven year itch and they want to scratch it …with a hacksaw!  Bam!  Did you see that coming?  Yea?  Oh whatever.  Fuck, I have to see the new one now, don’t I?