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| Name: Ryan Roe Email: prawnrr-rmv@this.com-yahoo.com Position: Movie / Television / Comic Book / Trivia Geek View Ryan's Personal Profile |
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| As you may have read in this journal entry, one of the events at the comic book & sci-fi convention I recently attended was an advance screening of the movie Saw. At no extra cost, all con-goers could see Saw. …Seesaw? I didn’t think the movie was going to be released for a few weeks, so I figured I had plenty of time to write a review and get it posted here well before the movie was out. I was going to be all professional, like a real movie critic. Well, the movie was released Friday, October 29. So although I saw the movie before most people, that whole “posting in advance” thing isn’t going to work out. Should I go ahead and post my review anyway? I can’t decide… What do you think? The movie begins with two men, strangers to each other, chained to opposite walls of a filthy bathroom. At this point the movie is pretty cool, because we don’t know anything about what’s going on, and neither do the characters. It can be good when a movie challenges its audience to guess at what’s happening… to a point, anyway. I got all the way through Battlefield Earth without really understanding it… But what I’m getting at is, the opening scenes are intriguing as the two men search for clues as to where they are and how they might escape. The villain of the piece is a serial killer who concocts devious schemes to test the limits of his victims. While viewing some of the sequences of his crimes, the viewer may ask himself or herself, “How much pain would I be willing to endure to stay alive? Could I access a very dark part of myself if I knew it meant survival?” It’s always good when a movie makes you ask yourself questions besides, “Should I go to the bathroom now, or can I hold it?’ Saw is a scary movie. It’s filmed with a stark and grainy look, and many scenes are so dark and dirty you can’t help but feel a bit creeped out, unless maybe your house is dark and dirty all the time. It is also quite violent. I was going to say that the scenes of dead people are graphic, but they actually weren’t that much worse than what you could see any night of the week on a procedural crime show on TV. Every generation of filmmakers will have to top the previous one in yecchiness of murder scenes in order to draw a reaction from a jaded audience. If that doesn’t make you don’t shudder to think, you have a stronger stomach than I do, or else you just don’t shudder easily. As for the acting, Cary Elwes is satisfactory as Dr. Larry Gordon, one of the men chained in the bathroom. Leigh Whannell as Adam, the other chained-up guy, is okay too, but nothing to write home about. Danny Glover acts all dramatic and hard-boiled as the cop whose mission is to bring down the killer. Monica Potter has a small role as Dr. Gordon’s distressed wife, and she’s believable. Though the movie succeeds at being scary, it ultimately falls apart. I found that the more I knew about the characters—and especially the more I knew about the killer—the less interesting the movie was. I think a lot of serial killer stories lose some of their coolness when they try to get into explaining the killer and why he does what he does. Also, without spoiling anything, I’ll say that Saw falls into the category of thrillers that feel like they have to throw “shocking” and “unexpected” twists at the audience to keep things interesting. But in this case, I guessed one major twist way before it was revealed, and even if I hadn’t, it wouldn’t have added anything for me. I’m so sick of that trend in movies. By the final minutes of the movie, it had lost me. If I were giving Saw a letter grade, I’d give it a C+. On my silly scale of Yay!/Yeah…/Yecch, which I’ll probably get rid of the next time I get around to doing a review, I’d give it a Yecch, unless you really like dark, gross horror movies, in which case it gets a Yeah…. Finally, the movie’s tagline is, “Every piece has a puzzle.” That’s pretty dumb… I’m going to start comparing taglines to their movies, and see whether the quality of the former tends to be a hint as to the quality of the latter. Comments on this post are closed. |
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| I, for one, like the Yay!/Yeah. . ./Yecch scale. Also, your tagline theory is good. For example, "In space, no one can hear you scream" for Alien or "Faith is a funny thing" for Dogma. Both of those are about as good as the movies they promote. |
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| "Work sucks." That kind of says it all, doesn't it? |
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| I think I'll investigate this tagline thing further... I might could get another journal entry out of it. I once wrote a fake trailer for the ultimate bad teen romantic comedy... The tagline was to be "It's all fun and games until somebody breaks a heart." |
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| I appreciate the review... Boy, I hate serial killer movies. Is the question "How much pain/humiliation could I endure" really something that needs to be asked by sane people? The answer is probably something along the lines of: You could handle more than you're afraid you can, but not as much as you hope you can. Now that you know that, what do you do? I think the real question of these kinds of movies is: How much pain/humiliation am I interested in watching other people endure? And if the answer to that question is "a lot," then that might be an issue. Are you really supposed to identify with the victims/cops, or with the killer? |
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| My thoughts as I watched this movie went something like... * Hey, I know that guy from somewhere. * I hope this girl doesn't expect me to like, put my arm around her or anything. * OH! Robin Hood: Men in Tights! (tight tights..) * I wonder if any of these people caught the "Stygian" thing? Should I tell them? * I'm really confused. * I don't really care who lives, just tell me who the killer is so I can go home. Personally I think they should have made a zombie movie. What's scarier than zombies? |
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| "What's scarier than zombies?" I don't know...magic flying zombies? |
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