I have finally seen the most disturbing movie since Seven. David has been trying to get me to watch this movie for a while now…he watched it many months ago shortly after we got the DVD, but for some reason I didn’t want to watch it at the time.
Part of me wishes I never had seen it, but part of me is very impressed by it. I suppose it’s similar to how I felt about Seven, which I have seen once and will never watch again. I found it to be so disturbing that I refuse to even have the DVD in the house. Excellent plot twists and suspense, but the depravity of the story just made me emotionally ill.
That’s almost exactly how I felt watching Saw. At first, the story was moving along very slowly, and more and more of the plot and backstory is revealed as the movie plays along. But once again, I felt that sick pre-diarhea feeling in my stomach at the mental torment I was experiencing.
I don’t ever want to see the movie again, though part of me wants to see the next ones in the series (I’ve read online synopsis of them and while incredibly disturbing, they seem to be very well written/executed - so to speak).
Cinematography was incredibly well done. The camera work was quite fluid, and I like some of the sped-up work they did during the flashbacks. The viewer actually felt what the characters were feeling. It was almost painful.
The story/writing, also excellent. If you didn’t know, the guy who played “Adam” was one of the writers. Very impressive detail in the story and amazingly well executed plot twists. I’m sort of interested to see the other movies just to see how well they are done (plus Donnie Wahlberg is in the next one).
As for gore, there is quite a bit, from a guy who has blown his brains out (supposedly), and a detective who takes a shotgun blast to the top of his head, to a girl who has to disembowel an alive but immobile man to get to a key that will save her life. (How did the key get there in the first place??)
I tell you, I’ve had dreams about it ever since we saw the movie, and it’s painful. I was up for hours last night seeing that freaking clown puppet in my mind.
The only thing that got me through it was that we watched Scary Movie 4 right afterward, which spoofs Saw (among other movies). So as my mind was sending me into nightmares wondering if the Jigsaw killer was going to capture me and put me into one of his bizarre traps, I was desperately clinging to the ridiculousness of Scary Movie 4. It barely got me through it.
That’s all. I didn’t intend to write a review really, just my mental torment from having seen this movie.
December 9th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Saw is a good movie. It is very creative and draws its suspense from interesting ideas and character interactions rather than shocking special effects. It is definitely gruesome, though.
Don’t waste your time or money on the sequels. They are just series of sillier and sillier “traps” and none of them approach the creativity of the first. If you were a horror fan I might say they would be worth a watch for the cheap fun of them, but knowing this isn’t a favorite genre for you, ignore them.
December 10th, 2007 at 10:30 am
Very well - you’ve made up my mind.
I was already vacillating and you’ve pushed me over the edge of not-seeing.
December 17th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
Saw is an excellent film — I agree with your analysis. So smart in its bloodlust. The twists are amazing.
I think Saw 2 is worth a viewing — the traps are just as gross (if not grosser) and the “twists” are really just about as genius as in the first one. That is, if I’m remembering correctly. Are they all trapped in a house with a toxin flowing through it? Something like that. Anyway, still smart.
3 sucked, and that kind of makes me very ambivalent about 4.
December 20th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Dennis: if I remember correctly, the writer of the original two was not the writer for the latter ones (but I’ll have to go back to IMDB and check).
I’m just amazed that the franchise continues, now with the announcement of the fifth in the series. They are also coming back-to-back so quickly. Usually it takes years and years but they are just hammering these things out. I guess there is a morbid fascination that keeps people coming back to the story.
IMDB has a LOT of spoilers on the plot twists - and since I never planned to watch any of the others, I’ve already read the spoilers, goofs, trivia, etc. They seemed to have had some good concepts in tying the story back together, so now I’m more curious if they executed that well or not - so I might have to watch the next one.