Saw (2004)

Director James Wan delivers a solid if somewhat uneven thriller, and those in need of a down n’ dirty little genre flick should have a good time here. Two men, complete strangers to one another, awaken in a dank dungeon like bathroom, chained to opposite walls and with a dead body separating the space between them. Our two prisoners, one a doctor and the other a photographer, are the next apparent victims of the aptly named “Jigsaw” serial killer. Jigsaw is a sort of “morality” killer ala the nut job in “Seven” as he kills, or rather “sets up” certain individuals whom he/she feels are not appreciating their lives as fully as they should. Jigsaw gets off by seeing how far he can stretch his victims by having them push aside all moral thoughts in the meaning of survival. For example, one scene (a true tension raiser and my personal favorite in the flick) has a young woman whose face is attached to a sort of bear trap device which will spring open after a certain amount of time and, for lack of better words, rip her pretty little kisser in half. However, if she can gut her fellow prisoner and pull a key out of the poor guy’s innards, then she can unlock the mask and Jigaw will allow her on her merry way. Sure it’s sick, but it’s an ingenious type of sick, no? We also get Danny Glover as, what else, a detective who has become rather unhealthily obsessed with the case, though Wan never let’s the film fall into the “detective after the psycho” lines and instead solely focuses on our prisoners and the awful predicament they are in.

“Saw” works just fine during the opening thirty minutes as the viewer truly becomes involved with Jigsaw’s would be victims and has you wondering just how the two are intertwined with one another. While neither actor really gets you to fully sympathize with them (the doc’s cheating on his wife and the photog is just one whiny bitch), you just can’t help but to put yourself in their situation. The whole movie has a nice and dirty little vibe to it, and the flashback scenes of Jigsaw’s previous victims are fairly gruesome both in matter of setup and execution. It’s the films middle section where things start to get a bit muddled, with a rather needless subplot with the obsessed Glover, and one or two many little twists in the plot, almost as if the filmmakers are saying, “see how clever we can be?” Visually, Wan serves up a rather gritty film and at times you even feel as if you’re watching an Italian Giallo along the lines of a Dario Argento or Mario Bava offering, and for those in the know that can never be a bad thing. Wan’s MTV style editing of quick cuts and overly frantic camera movements however, wear thin fairly fast as sometimes less is more in that department. The “surprise” ending is the film’s saving grace as it truly comes out of nowhere and sorta ties up some loose ends in the story. The ending was so good, in fact, that it almost makes you forget that after the first thirty minutes or so, there really wasn’t that much else going on. For the gorehounds, “Saw” is hardly the bloodbath that Lion’s Gate Films promoted in their advertising. Though there are indeed several juicy bits, it’s more along the lines of the original “TCM” as you think you are seeing more than there actually is, and from a filmmaking standpoint that means you did your job well.

During the current lame trend of PG-13 rated horror films, “SAW” is a refreshingly welcome blast of hard-core horror. While far from a perfect film, it’s nice to see a low-budget film like this one get nice theatrical run. Kudos to Lions Gate for having the balls to promote it, as “Saw” very easily could have been relegated t art-house and midnight showings only. A flawed but disturbing film, “Saw” should deliver the goods for most genre aficionados.