'Saw'

Once I started college, I felt less motivated to celebrate the holidays. I'm not entirely sure of the reason why, but when I do feel that the festivities bit me and gave me a three-day fever, I try not to fight it. So while I have no plans to embrace the spooky on the 31st this year, I can admit that I did embrace some of the feelings Halloween inspires.

For example, I finally watched Saw.

Yep. I watched it. Willingly.

I - Fangirl, Mel, Astrid, or whoever people know me as online - who has denounced the torture porn genre without hesitation, watched Saw.

Even my real life friends and parents didn't believe me when I said it.

I watched the grandfather of the torture porn genre's popularity in the first decade of the 2000s.

And I liked it.

Yes, I am dead serious. I like Saw 1.

And yes, since I am an opinionated bitch who has never failed to completely stop voicing her thoughts on something she feels strongly about, I will explain myself. Spoilers ahead, if you dare.

Hiya, Zep. Meet gun.

When I wasn't scoffing at it, I've had an academic fascination with the Saw franchise. The first film was a small indie project that had tickets sell like fresh, lump hotcakes out of the oven and birthed six sequels, all released around Halloween on a yearly basis. I wondered what itch these films scratched (besides torture porn enthusiasts and fetishists), and why they continued to be made, even as fans began to vocalize how exhausted and burned out they became by the fourth or fifth release. I grew to resent the Saw series profoundly with each passing year, peaking with my suffering a blue screen of death when I heard the late Chester Bennington cameoed in Saw 7 as a skinhead (1). Hell, the series' recent return via Jigsaw made me grumble for a long hard 20 minutes. But then Captain Hindsight reminded me that this sleazy money-making cash cow came out in a time when the remake and sequel trend did not yet dominate the market. It might have directly or indirectly contributed to the creative desert that is the film industry right now, but at least Saw was pretty much alone when it sold its soul for cash.

And to be fair, I was still a kid when the first film came out in 2004, so my memory might be hazy.

Do note that I chose to watch the first movie (and ONLY the first movie) because I was bored and Netflix's horror movie catalogue is even more vapid and limited than last year's. I wanted to watch something spooky and scary, had nothing else better to do, and decided to bite the bullet. Having survived this crazy gamble I accepted, I realized I was both right and wrong about this franchise. This franchise contains so much copious blood and gore that Dragon Age Origins looks like Sesame Street... except Saw 1.

Saw 4's soundtrack had songs by Emilie Autumn and
The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. ... I don't even (2).

Now that I experienced the first film, I am even more livid at what came after it. I am used to Hollywood completely contorting and twisting a film while making a duplicate with all of the blatant fanservice and none of the creative strengths, but I still cannot grasp how demented and twisted horror films became after Saw . They looked at a suspenseful thriller with shocking themes and dark humor, drained all of the subtlety and pumped in explicit blood, gore, and filth until the balloon exploded. Another tragic example of executives completely missing the point... although no one likes Captain Hindsight and his easy, brutal judgements on those who do not have the gift of foresight.

And maybe I'm being too harsh on the Saw franchise and torture porn in general. After all, anything foreign living inside one's own body still disturbs me to near-phobic extremes (i.e. tokophobia) thanks in part to my dad showing me Aliens when I was six. And House did not help (part 1 and part 2 of "Euphoria" still gives me nightmares to this day). So I do have my rational and irrational biases.

Torture might not hit the same threshold of "FUCK NO!!!" as creepy parasites leeching off your body and its nutrients, but I also have an embarrassingly low tolerance for pain and needless suffering. The saw films can tout all they want about Jigsaw testing how much his victims value life, but I see no justification for creating such heinous devices for a person who cheated on their spouse, or did drugs, or gambled, or slept around, etc. I can see why someone would inflict such pain on a pedophile, a billionaire who buys his way out of court despite committing a legitimate crime with graphic evidence, or a war criminal as depraved as Adolph Hitler, but the average everyman Joe? I don't condone vigilante justice, but I at least can understand enough of the reasoning behind it to get why someone would retaliate and punish another person. But at least in this film Jigsaw has some connection to Lawrence, and I can chalk up the rest of his decisions to pure insanity or boredom.

Because sometimes the moral of a story is that sometimes things happen because the antagonist was bored and wanted to fuck with everyone.

I will give Saw 1 credit for one thing: the bloodiest, nastiest, "torture porn" act in the entire movie is not directly shown on screen. Even better, that gory moment happens not at the beginning, but during the climax. Even better than better, it was an act done as a last resort, when a character was at their breaking point. And best of all, I cared about that character, and I cringed as I watched him make the choice to hurt himself while emotionally devastated and distraught. That, dear readers, is the kind of horror I enjoy. I'm so invested and care about the characters that all I want is for them to get out of hell alive.

Not gonna lie, this nearly made me cry.

It's tricky to craft a character in a way to make the audience care, especially when each individual has their own expectations and preferences when it comes to judging people on their own merits. Even if a critic cannot sympathize with a character but still see the master pulling the right strings at the right time to make the puppet dance, they may still give credit for performing the act competently from an objective perspective. Saw 1 succeeds objectively in giving Adam and Lawrence enough personality and life that every dreaded second they are trapped makes the anticipation for the climax maddening. And while Adam pissed me off for the first half of the movie, I realized I cared enough about him when I was worrying for his sanity and safety during the climax.

And that ending. The epic music, the badass speech, the bone-chilling screams... This is the first bleak, dark ending to a horror film I both loved and wanted to cry over. I didn't sleep very well that night.

Congrats, Saw, you made me, a cynic hellbent on hating you for thirteen years, give a shit. I hope you are smug and happy about serving my ass to me on a silver platter after another stubborn bastard like you did the same but on a platinum platter (3).

But before Saw sprawls itself on the victory table and indulges in the finest food in the world, it must know that I will not list this as one of my favorite horror films of all time just yet. If I were to split the movie into three pieces -- the trap, the past, and the investigation -- I can identify precisely what I didn't like about the story. The moments with Adam and Lawrence (the trap) could have failed if the actors were horrible, but Cary Elwes more than made up whatever Leigh Whannell lacked (although he was decent too). The past provided enough context for Lawrence and Adam's situation that I grew to care about them in spite of the technical limitations of this low-budget movie. As for the investigation with the police officers... meh. Somehow despite getting more screen time and character development than Lawrence's family, held hostage with the threat of death hanging over them while he's trapped with Adam, I cannot say a single thing about David Tapp besides his voice sounding funny after a neck injury. For some reason the entire police stuff contrasted too sharply next to the rest of the film's content, and it feels like boring filler at best and a waste of time at worst.

And then there's the villain, the worst part of the whole movie, in my humble opinion. No offense to  Tobin Bell, of course, who is charismatic despite the lousy character he's been given. Maybe it's because I heard how convoluted the franchise becomes with Jigsaw's modus operandi and raison d'être or I've seen too many bad episodes of Criminal Minds, but I have no interest in him as a character or a narrative device. No matter how the story tries to make him cool, interesting, or mysterious, my brain continues to label him as a generic crazy killer with a penchant for elaborate forms of torture for people he wants to fuck with. I care more about his victims, who are portrayed as flawed people, than Jigsaw, portrayed more as a rejected Megami Tensei cosmic entity or a force of nature.

"I want to play a game."

”え、何ですか？” (4)

Upon further contemplation, I wonder if the shifting of focus from Jigsaw's victims to the killer himself is another reason I don't want to continue the series. While some of my favorite characters in fiction are analytical and strategic "masterminds", I still expect them to have humanity, weakness, and conflict so they are nuanced rather than one-dimensional. The characters in Saw 1 are not very deep, even Lawrence and Adam, whom we spend the most time getting to know, but they have enough range in behavior, mood, and intelligence depending on the circumstances that I can believe that they are not one-note. I cannot say the same about what little we see of Jigsaw or either of the police officers that try to hunt him down. At least the filmmakers had the good sense to keep the villain in the dark for 70% of the movie instead of flaunting him 70% of the movie.

The nice cherry on top is that Saw 1 is really ugly when it needs to be. The crying and screaming are not polished, practiced, and constrained; the actors' expressions do not look practiced or shallow, like a mask donned for as long as the tape was rolling. I was far more upset physically and emotionally by Lawrence and Adam succumbing to hysteria than the fact an amputation takes place. Saw 1 feels so raw, real, and gritty in its atmosphere and the actors' performances in a way movies in general seem to be lacking in recent years. That's a praise for this movie and a damning insult to the state of Hollywood now.

Well, good job, Saw 1. You made me care despite my spending over half of my life building a wall between me and you. You were a fun watch, no alcohol required. This might be the first horror film in a while that I genuinely enjoyed and was also competently made from a technical perspective for a small production. The cinematography is varied to convey mood and provide additional framing for the character in the shot, even if the rapid, frantic edits to the infamous reverse bear trap scene was probably overdone. I adore the score, especially "Hello Zepp", the atmosphere conveyed disorientation and desperation well, and the whole package has withstood the sands of time enough to be a contender for a true classic horror film of the turn-of-the-century.

The jury's still out regarding how well it will stay in my good graces, but I faced one of my childhood boogymen and survived unscathed.

I wish I could say the same about Lawrence and Adam. Those poor boys need a hug. (5)

3 out of 5

Now that I've said more than enough positive things about a fucking Saw film of all things, I need to cleanse my palette very, very thoroughly.

Crazy cool people punching and fighting each other? Hell yeah! I've been craving shonen like mad lately!

~~~~~~~~Notes:~~~~~~~~

(1) -- Damn it. It's been three months and his passing still hurts. Maybe when I feel a bit more comfortable, I might write about Linkin Park one more time in Chester's memory. Saying something while everyone and their mother had something to say seemed too... easy and inauthentic to me because of the potential oversaturation. Or maybe it doesn't matter in a case like Chester's. Regardless, I'll say something when I'm ready, and now's not it.

(2) -- I took another look and, well... Saw 2's soundtrack had Marilyn Manson and The Used; Saw 5 had Emilie Autumn (again); Saw 6 had Lacuna Coil (what), Type O Negative (WHAT), and The 69 Eyes (WHAT?!); and finally Saw 7 had Dead by Sunrise (rip, Chester), Lordi (*weeps*), and Dir en grey (HERESY!!! LEAVE JAPANESE BANDS OUT OF THIS, YOU SICK FUCKS!!!!). Damn you, Saw, you held the bands and artists I like hostage in one of your traps, didn't you?! What did you do to them?!?! What did they do to deserve this?!?!

*sighs* ... Excuse me while I go stare into the bottomless void and contemplate the meaning of life.

(3) -- Between Saw 1 and Yuri!!! on Ice, 2017 has become a year that has tested the limits of my comfort zone, trespassed upon my heart, beat me within an inch of my life, and served me humble pie as I recover in the hospital with multiple casts and concussions. My ego and I probably did deserve to be knocked down a peg. Or twenty. ^_^'

(4) -- Fellow blogger Voltech would sometimes sequence images in a way to represent his reaction to something, so I have to give him some credit for this.

(5) -- Yes, I am aware of Lawrence's true fate. That's another reason I won't watch the rest of the series. I'm just stubborn and overprotective of my adopted fictional children like that. Ask Shinjiro.