If
you told me a year ago that I'd be sitting in a movie theater waiting to watch
all five movies in the Saw franchise back-to-back, I'd have chained you to a
pipe and left you for dead. Torture-porn turns my stomach, and even the Final
Destination
movies left me feeling queasy. I think The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a demented
masterpiece, but there's something disturbing and even depraved about movies
whose only suspense derives from wondering which defenseless person will die
next, and in what horrible fashion.
The
arrival of a new Saw movie doesn't seem like cause for celebration, but on the day
before Saw V's
opening, AMC Theaters offered lucky fans in about four dozen venues nationwide
the chance to watch a marathon of all four previous installments, followed by
the just post-midnight première of the new arrival. Which is how I found myself
sitting in a mall in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, waiting for the torture to start.
Why
was I there? Maybe I'm just a belated rubbernecker, giving in to the urge to
peek after driving past the same accident again and again. Maybe I was
compelled to find out just how bad, how sick, how vile the Saw movies really are. Maybe
I just thought it would make a good article.
Going
in, I knew almost zero about the movies. I gathered there was some guy named
Jigsaw, played by Tobin Bell, who concocts elaborate scenarios in which his
captives must mutilate themselves in order to survive. I think Danny Glover's
in the first one. And that's about it. I was a Saw virgin, preparing to have
my eyeballs raped with a rusty screwdriver for the better part of 10 hours. Here's
how it went, in hour-by-hour (and sometimes minute-by-minute) detail:
Saw (2004)
The
setup: Cary
Elwes and Leigh Whannell are chained to pipes at opposite ends of a dank,
white-tiled room; a dead man with his brains blown out is lying on the floor
between them. They have been imprisoned by the Jigsaw Killer, who places his
victims in elaborate traps which require them to mutilate themselves (or
others) to escape. Elwes' task is to kill his fellow prisoner and saw off his
foot with a hacksaw before the killer who has taken his wife and child hostage
ends their lives.
4:00
p.m. It
begins. Apart from me, the theater is entirely empty.
4:02
p.m. Is
it supposed to be this dark? I can't see anything.
4:04
p.m. Whannell's
character yells, "Turn on the lights!"
4:12
p.m. Where
are Cary Elwes' eyebrows?
4:13
p.m. A
woman walks into the theater. I've got company. She moves into my row, which is
a little odd. Okay, now she's walking right up to me. "Are you here for the
whole thing?" she asks. "Uh, yes," I stammer, more unnerved by her presence
than anything onscreen. It turns out her teenage son and a group of his friends
are in the lobby, but the staff won't admit them without an adult guardian.
Will I come up front and vouch for them so a bunch of 16-year-olds can sit
through 10 hours of sadism and gore? Sure, why not?
4:17
p.m. Where
did those hacksaws come from? The teenagers enter and loudly thank me by name.
4:20
p.m. Cut
away to the cops investigating one of Jigsaw's other killings. Technically, one
of them points out, Jigsaw is "not actually a murderer," since he only arranges
the circumstances of their deaths. This sounds not entirely right. I make a
note to check this with my wife, who is a lawyer. It turns out to be bunkum.
4:21
p.m. Hey,
it's that Asian dude from Lost!
4:23
p.m. Hey,
it's Ben from Lost!
4:25
p.m. Is
that a puppet?
4:26
p.m. For
a maniac, Jigsaw has a pretty highly developed aesthetic, which loosely
resembles the video for Nine Inch Nails' "Closer," the one with the pig's head.
4:31
p.m. Okay,
now the puppet is riding a tricycle. Somebody had a messed-up childhood.
4:32
p.m. Amanda
(Shawnee Smith) describes being locked in an iron mask and forced to tunnel into
her cellmate's stomach for the key before the mask rips her jaw open. Well, she
doesn't actually speak. She just quivers while the movie cuts away to strobing
flashbacks that culminate with her sifting through a pile of gooey guts. Show,
don't tell.
4:33
p.m. Amanda,
a former junkie, credits Jigsaw with helping her find meaning in life. "He
helped me," she says. So he's like a life coach, but with razor wire.
4:45
p.m. The
police follow a clue to Stygian St. Badabing!
4:50
p.m. And
there's that pig's head.
5:05
p.m. Whannell
tries to trick Jigsaw by pretending he's been poisoned. Even for fake dying,
it's pretty lousy.
5:31
p.m. Elwes
makes with the sawing. Mmmm.
5:33
p.m. Elwes
is so pale, he looks like Tatsuya Nakadai in Ran, and Whannell keeps
reminding me of Jimmy Fallon, which is distracting, even if I would like to see
Fallon chained up in a basement somewhere.
5:43
p.m. One
down. I thought I'd be more disturbed at this point, but James Wan's direction
is so inept, it's hard to feel much of anything. Bring on the gore.
Saw
II (2005)
The
setup: Six
people, including the son of detective Donnie Wahlberg, must find their way out
of a booby-trapped house before the doors shut forever. And they've been dosed
with a slow-acting nerve agent to boot.
6:01
p.m. "It's
6:01," one of the teenagers yells out, in watch-tapping tone of voice. The
movie starts. There are now about a dozen people in the theater, most of them
too young to vote.
6:08
p.m. Hey,
it's Kerry, that cute detective from the first movie!
6:11
p.m. The
cops are tracking down Jigsaw. This is like a lousy episode of Criminal
Minds.
6:15
p.m. The
cops creep into Jigsaw's warehouse. The tricycle of doom approaches.
6:18
p.m. So
far, we're following the rule of sequels: When in doubt, double everything.
6:20
p.m. Jigsaw
coos, "Oh yes, there will be blood." Did Paul Thomas Anderson know he was
stealing the tagline from a second-rate horror movie?
6:21
p.m. Six
people wake up in a room. Suddenly this feels like a bad Off-Broadway play.
6:23
p.m. Hey,
is Amanda one of the six? She is. That hardly seems fair.
6:24
p.m. Gee,
I wonder if that guy in the hooded sweatshirt who keeps skulking around in the
back of the frame will turn out to be important. Probably not.
6:27
p.m. "He's
testing us," Amanda yells. "He wants us to survive this."
6:31
p.m. There's
Skulky again.
6:36
p.m. They
should have called this Saw II: Still Skulkin'.
6:38
p.m. Turns
out Skulky's name is Obi. I like mine better.
6:49
p.m.
"Those who do not appreciate life do not deserve life," Jigsaw says. I'm going
to get that crocheted on something.
6:55
p.m. Amanda
gets chucked into a pit full of hypodermic needles. Ouch.
6:59
p.m. A
cop yells, "We need to start thinking outside the box, or his son is going to
end up in one." Zing!
7:00
p.m. Jigsaw
seems to know everything about everybody. The fantasy of the omniscient serial
killer strikes again.
7:07
p.m. Now that's how you fake being
poisoned.
7:09
p.m. Amanda
and the kid are being chased around the house by a crazy Latino dude with a
knife. I feel a flicker of involvement. The kid I can do without, but putting
Amanda through this twice is just mean.
7:16
p.m. Jigsaw
directs Wahlberg to the location of his son. "It's the last house on the left."
Pow!
7:30
p.m. Turns
out Amanda was working with Jigsaw all along.
7:34
p.m. Two
down. II
is a big improvement; it's basically hackwork, but it's competent hackwork. It
actually manages to engender sympathy for its characters, which is more than
you can say for anything else in the franchise. One of those characters turns
out to be a serial killer's assistant, but still. Jigsaw's philosophy of
self-definition through violence is a tad crypto-fascist, but it isn't put
forth with enough conviction to be genuinely troubling.
[pagebreak]
Saw
III (2006)
The
setup: Amanda
kidnaps a doctor to operate on Jigsaw's brain tumor. A man whose son was killed
by a drunk driver must "learn to forgive" by freeing a series of people from Jigsaw's
traps.
8:05
p.m. Hey,
it's Kerry!
8:15
p.m. Kerry
closes her medicine cabinet and sees a figure standing behind her. If we're
resorting to mirror scares this early in the game, we're in trouble.
8:19
p.m. Oh
my God! They killed Kerry!
8:23
p.m. Another
mirror scare? The well is really running dry.
8:24
p.m. The
doctor calls out, "Hello, is anybody here?" We are in full-on grade-C slasher-movie
territory.
8:25
p.m. Amanda
whips out her knife and gives her shoulders a little flex. She's enjoying this.
8:28
p.m. More
words of wisdom from Jigsaw. "Death is a surprise party." A really, really
lousy surprise party.
8:38
p.m. I
really don't like Amanda's hair this time.
8:40
p.m. So
Jigsaw needs an operation to "decompress his brain." What's the technical term
for that?
8:48
p.m. At
long last, the Saw
series has its first pair of naked boobies.
9:07
p.m.
Jigsaw has a seizure, and we see flashes of a blonde-haired woman. Mrs. Jigsaw?
9:10
p.m. Even
"I love you" sounds creepy when Tobin Bell says it.
9:53
p.m. Amanda
gets shot, and Jigsaw's throat is sliced open with a circular saw. This is
going to be tough to get out of.
9:55
p.m.
Three down. Signs of wear are definitely starting to show. Jigsaw's death traps
have become so baroque they're kind of ridiculous, like the one that threatens
to drown its victim in churned-up pig carcasses. Watching the movies back-to-back
definitely has a numbing effect. The sight of a man having his limbs twisted
until the bones pop through his skin might have actually seemed disturbing a
few hours ago. I eat a cheeseburger.
Saw
IV (2007)
The
setup: Could
Jigsaw have yet another helper? One obsessed cop has to know. The fate of two
colleagues—including Donnie Wahlberg, who has been chained up since the
end of II—hangs
in the balance.
10:11
p.m. The
autopsy. Hello, Jigsaw's willie.
10:14
p.m. Jigsaw's
head is opened up with a bone saw, his brain removed, and his chest cut open.
So he seems to be pretty darn dead.
10:34
p.m. After
three movies, it must be getting harder to think up novel ways to kill people,
but here's one: a woman strapped to a chair, with her hair wound around a
slowly turning crank. Death by ponytail.
11:00
p.m. A
fleeting glimpse of a tricycle hanging from a basement rafter. Is that all we
get?
11:18
p.m. Flashback
to Jigsaw's first killing, which conveniently takes place in the year of the
pig.
11:22
p.m. Hey,
it's the bereaved dad from III. Will this mean anything to anyone who hasn't
just watched it?
11:38
p.m. Four
down. My vision is starting to blur, but I have to admit I'm kind of fascinated
by the contortions the writers have gone through to keep Bell onscreen. In this
case, it involves jumping backward in time after the first scene, and staging a
plot that runs parallel with the events of III until the two movies meet
at the end. The acting keeps getting worse: Costas Mandylor, the homicide
detective who is revealed as Jigsaw's protégé, is so wooden that he makes
Michael Paré look like Laurence Olivier.
Saw
V (2008)
The
setup:
Having been revealed as Jigsaw's protégé, detective Costas Mandylor sets a trap
for the FBI man on his tail. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, five people progress
through a series of tests which knock them off one by one.
12:01
a.m. The
main event. The dozen or so people in the theater has now swelled to upward of
60, not counting one infant.
12:06
a.m. Like III, V begins
right where the previous movie left off. I wonder if they'll do some Godfather-type special edition
where they knit all the scenes together in chronological order.
12:08
a.m.
Apparently we're going to watch Mandylor and the equally lifeless Scott Patterson
chase after each other for a good chunk of the movie. Oh joy.
12:22
a.m. A
thought. Has anyone actually escaped one of Jigsaw's traps? He keeps falling
back on the rationale that he gives people "a chance," but so far, Amanda is
the only one to get a passing grade, and she flunks out at the end of III. I guess there's not much
percentage in building these elaborate death machines if you aren't going to
see them at work.
12:24
a.m. Patterson
wakes up with his head inside a box which rapidly begins to fill with water.
This would be scarier were it not issuing from water-cooler jugs.
12:37
a.m. Once
again, Jigsaw is lecturing his victims about squandering their "advantages." I
wonder if the franchise will get around to explaining his anti-elitist bent.
Maybe the rich kids were mean to him at school?
12:48
a.m. Even
with the larger crowd, there's a conspicuous lack of noise from the crowd. Even
the baby is quiet. No one's yelling out for people to duck, or not open that
door. No one cares if they live or die.
12:59
a.m. "Killing
is distasteful to me," Jigsaw says. He has a funny way of showing it.
1:09
a.m. Hey!
Obi!
1:20
a.m. Some
guy is getting his arm cut in half lengthwise by a table saw. At this point, it
doesn't faze me at all.
1:40
a.m. [Spoiler!]
Mandylor outwits Patterson by throwing himself into a box filled with broken
glass, which provides protection as the walls of the room subsequently close in
and crush Patterson to paste (the splintering ulna is a nice touch).
Unfortunate, they couldn't both be smooshed, but half a loaf is better than
none.
1:42
a.m. I
live!
Closing
thoughts: After
watching the Saw
franchise in toto, I no longer see its success as a sign of the impending
apocalypse. I wouldn't say I'm a convert, but the movies are at least
marginally more thoughtful than some of their counterparts, and there's
definitely been an effort made (not always successfully) to make sure the
sequels aren't just rehashed versions of their predecessors. I don't see myself
showing up just past midnight next year to see Saw VI, but stranger things have
happened.
Rather
than putting the viewer in the implicit position of identifying with the
torturer, the Saw
movies are, as their title indicates, voyeuristic. They aren't on anybody's
side; they just want to put on a good show. While later installments veer
toward more conventional vigilantism, the early movies are deliberately vague
about the "crimes" Jigsaw's victims have committed, which often amount to no
more than failing to sufficiently appreciate their lives. This may not be an
entirely healthy twist, but it's a relief from the usual if-you-fuck, you-die
logic of slasher movies.
While
the movies are knee-deep in gore, the Rube Goldberg nature of Jigsaw's contraptions
prevents them from being too disturbing. The only one that made me wince was
one of the simplest, from Saw II: a Plexiglas box with razor-sharp arm-holes which
trap the victim's wrists and slice them to ribbons. (Sort of a malignant twist
on the hand in the cookie jar.) There's nothing to rival the woman having her
spine severed with a hunting knife in Wolf Creek, to name one grotesque
example.
Basically,
as their dingy production design and grinding scores indicate, the Saw movies are gothics,
luridly exaggerated quasi-morality plays whose initial shocks dissipate with
each further installment. After five movies, Jigsaw and his methods have become
familiar, almost comforting. He's a serial killer, but at least he's reliable.