Overview
How much blood would you shed to stay alive?
Two men wake up to find themselves shackled in a grimy, abandoned bathroom. As they struggle to comprehend their predicament, they discover a disturbing tape left behind by the sadistic mastermind known as Jigsaw. With a chilling voice and cryptic instructions, Jigsaw informs them that they must partake in a gruesome game in order to secure their freedom.
Review
The Saw franchise is limitless in scope, thanks to the moral executioner known as Jigsaw. There are countless scenarios where bad people should get their due. But I question why you would target these two nimrods in the original Saw when there would be far better candidates to torture. Most likely the answer is convenience, or possibly fate. But there are far better bottom-feeding fish to fry.
Now if Jigsaw ever captured someone like me, the franchise would end. When given the task to kill my fellow captive, I’d be like: “I don’t give a shit about him or myself.” Then I would proceed to sing “99 Bottles of Beer” over and over which would fill the entire 103 minutes of runtime. There’d be a shadow of Jigsaw hanging himself in the other room, bored and jaded.
If you like puzzles and horror, I can see why many would enjoy this movie. To me, it’s just one of those wash and repeat series of films. Each film will be destined to be good, but never great. I could be wrong, because this is my first viewing of any Saw movie and I plan to view the rest in chronological order. So I will report back my error if that should occur.
Saw gets lumped in sometimes with the list of most disturbing films ever made, and I highly disagree. This doesn’t hold a flicker of a flame to some of the others I’ve seen on that very list, like Martyrs, Irreversible, A Serbian Film or Antichrist.
But it’s a good film when you’re in the mood for some morally-driven torture porn with some creative devices and traps.
Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)
