Saw

Yes, I finally got around to seeing the 2004 horror film, Saw. Saw was directed by James Wan, a Chinese director born in Australia. Saw was first a 2003 short and it had a runtime of about 10 minutes. It followed the basic premise of David, an orderly, who was kidnapped and forced to play a game of survival. The 2004 feature film of Saw follows a similar plot line to Wan’s test short. Saw would also be the first film in a series of films that includes Saw 2, Saw 3 and Saw 4, the latter of which is awaiting release later this year.

The basic plot of Saw is rather simple. Two men wake up in a dirty bathroom and are chained by their ankles to pipes on the wall. Between them lies a dead man clutching a tape player and a handgun. Through a series of events and flashbacks, the two men learn about why they are being held captive and what they must do to escape and, in the case of one of the men, save their family. Leigh Whannell, who also wrote Saw, is Adam, one of the men. Cary Elwes is Dr. Lawrence Gordon, the other man. Both men are connected in a certain way and, without giving too much away, this leads to some interesting moments between the characters.

Unfortunately, the potential for engaging and original characters is left untapped. In its place, we have a basic cookie cutter version of several characters. Danny Glover, for instance, is the standard obsessed cop who attempts to run in and save the day near the climax of the film. Ken Leung plays his partner, who tragically dies pursuing the villain. The villain remains a mystery throughout most of the film, with a slick subterfuge as to his or her real identity and, better still, his or her real motives. This portion of the film is quite smart, actually.

Despite the intriguing plot and some rather chilling set-ups involving some of the villain’s traps, Saw remains to be rather flat. The violence is shot in familiar “show-then-cutaway” fashion, which actually robs the film of some of its intensity and some of its legitimate fear. This tactic is standard in horror films, however, that lose the sense of timing and visual effects that are often lost in most modern thrillers or horrors. Saw is a victim of this familiar trend of showing too much while not showing enough. When other thriller or horror creators were letting shadows or sounds create the chills in their films, other filmmakers were showing the dissection, the blood and the guts of their characters on the screen. Masters like Hitchcock left much to our imagination, while likewise masters like Romero let it all hang out. Saw and much of the “nu-horror” genre attempt to walk a tightrope and, most often, fail.

Still, Saw does get marks for effort and for being original. The motives of the villain are tremendously invigorating, in fact, and some of the set-ups are downright creepy. The big finish, complete with a nice plot twist, is quite a good payoff. With all of that going for it, Saw still stumbles and falters. The performances are cookie cutter and often somewhere between bland and boring and horrifically overacted. The pain of the characters is either completely missed or zeroed in on with such astute attention to over-detail that the scream-fest becomes laughable (see Cary Elwes near the close of the film).

Saw is part psychological thriller and part in-your-face gorefest. It doesn’t succeed fully at either medium, but it does succeed at being a fresh and often very refreshing film because of its creative plot. If only the direction, acting and script would follow up on its promising premise and engaging first half-hour, we would have a hell of a horror film. Instead, Saw misses the mark.

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