I Got Cranky And Watched SAW I through VII!

At a certain age, time flies whether or not you’re having fun. Between sinus pressure oh so mildly messing with my hearing, and constant, horrific evidence of man’s inhumanity to man, I haven’t felt compelled to recommend tunes and flicks online the last week or so. Plus, there was 24 hours where Facebook deleted every post linking to my blog, apparently believing Ghost to have cooties. The waterfall of alerts from Team Zuck compelled me to consider shifting the majority of my attention to a zine, rather than this site. Tactility! Old school design! Charging money for completed work! So novel! So retro! While initially high on the concept, I soon got bogged down mentally debating what kind of writing goes where and why, further diminishing my urge to type.

The climax of spooky season coinciding with an off-custody week, I planned to spend a lot of time on the couch listless and grumbling, watching horror movies until sleep or inspiration struck. One thing I’ve learned from therapy is that I get past funk and frustration more quickly if I accept the state, rather than declare myself unworthy of it, dwelling on acts of productivity I don’t want to do and won’t unless truly necessary. And so I nestled into my crank mode, bouncing around various streaming sites in search of fictional people with absurd problems. I didn’t want to watch anything too good or too bad, lest I found myself handwringing about whether or not I should be taking notes and paying close attention for a potential post. I wanted a little novelty, a little mundanity, with just enough going on to keep my attention as I played with my phone, but not so much I’d want to put the phone down. Apparently, I wanted Saw.

I was charmed by the little torture-fest that could when it first hit DVD in 2005, especially after I watched the behind-the-scenes featurettes. Did you notice how Cary Elwes’ thespian skills suddenly escape him during the denouement, as if he was actually suffering from severe blood loss? Turns out he only got to do one take of this sequence on the last day of filming, with crew members dismantling the set behind him. Try getting Christian Bale to act under those circumstances! This was a major lightbulb moment for me as a critic, realizing just how much actors are at the mercy of directors, editors, even that guy who won’t stop screwing with the lights, when it comes to how their performance comes off. I do my damndest not to assume the essential skill level of actors now, realizing how little say most have over the final product.

Director James Wan & writer Leigh Whannell, Aussie film school buddies inspired by The Blair Witch Project to figure out this self-financed, low-budget horror thing, came off as canny, inspired young filmmakers in their interviews, which bore out in their careers since. Once he got a handle on the Hollywood game (only see Dead Silence after every other scary doll movie ever), Wan launched more than his share of reliable horror franchises like The Conjuring and Insidious, before making a Fast sequel and an Aquaman movie that made a billion dollars at the box office. Dude made an Entourage joke a reality! And with a DC comics property! No guarantee of success there! Whannell recently directed Elisabeth Moss in The Invisible Man, niftier and smarter than expected, and I’ve heard good things about his movie Upgrade too.

Wan ’n’ Whannell (lol) oversaw the scripting of the second and third movies, but by the fourth handed most responsibilities over to other collaborators. The guy who edited the first five directed the sixth. The production designer of Saw II directed the fifth. That kind of thing. I personally jumped off the train about fifteen minutes into Saw IV, shocked to be expected to remember the last names of all previous victims and police detectives. I did watch 2021’s Spiral - once meant as a bold new beginning to the franchise, now retroactively reduced to Saw IX by the title of this year’s Saw X. But I wanted to pay witness to Chris Rock’s bizarre choice of vanity project (Jordan Peele and John Krasinski must have made the leap to horror look so easy!), rather than revisit the franchise. 

I’ve long pondered learning exactly how soapy these movies became, but it wasn’t until Hulu kept flashing the icons at me this month that I decided to commit to the original seven (I’m sure I’ll endure VIII - a.k.a. Jigsaw - and X eventually). And it was easier than expected! I’m generally not a gorehound, and quick to be skeeved out by anything that strikes me as artlessly grotesque, or exploitive of pain. But Saw’s penchant for campy camera tricks - particularly those bits where characters thrash about in high-speed upon realizing what their stuck in - provide me just enough ironic distance from the brutal, flesh-ripping agony of the scenarios. It’s very easy for me to remember these are just movies. Watching them in a binge also kept me from forgetting which one is Detective Williams and which one is Detective Hoffman, while still tickled at how often the films reference traps from every. single. previous. movie.

Despite my original intent, son of a gun if I didn’t feel like writing about the movies after. In case you’re curious, or the kind of scaredy cat who likes to hear about this stuff but never see it, here’s some explanatory blurbage (Gregg Turkington-inspired rating scale explained here).

Saw (2004)

Wesley from The Princess Bride, now ethically compromised and in denial about his ennui, wakes up chained to a pipe in the Worst Bathroom Ever, the rather shouty screenwriter chained up on the other side of the room. Roger Murtaugh from Lethal Weapon and Jarin, The Nurse Who Keeps Reminding Us His Name Is Jarin, from Old, are police detectives looking for The Jigsaw Killer, who’s like Kevin Spacey in Seven crossed with Tony Robbins, coming up with elaborate death traps with the purpose of inspiring a renewed appreciation for life, assuming you’re not brutally gored when the timer goes off. Even if you fondly remember a ghoulish trap or surprise plot twist, you may have forgotten that Michael Emerson, later of Lost, Person Of Interest, and Evil, gets to do some menacing as a red herring. As with Blair Witch Project, I’m sure the film’s initial novelty might be hard to access umpteen sequels and rip-offs later. But for bit of low-budget trash, it really does pop. Best trap: the barb wire maze. The trick would be to calm down... POPCORN CLASSIC.

Saw II (2005)

Am I really writing about a horror series where the most soulful performance might come from a New Kid On The Block? Donnie Wahlberg set the stage for his eventual CBS Friday payday as Detective Williams, a bad dad, bad husband and bad cop who still doesn’t seem like he earned having to listen to the Jigsaw Killer’s absurd rationalizations for disemboweling the spiritually bereft and traumatizing their families (in fact, Eric Knudsen might be even more soulful as Williams’ good-egg-in-a-bad-mood son, put through hell by Jigsaw for his dad’s moral edification or something). Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, who wrote an original script initially dismissed as too Saw-like only to see it morphed into a sequel (and directing two more after that!), Saw II benefits from a larger ensemble and grander traps (the pit of hypodermics, my god) while still centering on a schmuck in denial, hollering in disbelief that this pious asshole of an engineer has gone to such ridiculous lengths to terminally fuck with his life. The quality of Saw is the reason Saw II exists, but the quality of Saw II is the reason all the others do. Best trap: the pit of used hypodermic needles. I hope she got a booster or twelve after. POPCORN CLASSIC.

Saw III (2006)

A bereaved father desperate for vengeance stumbles around an immersive theatrical experience, forced to watch those he wants dead get dead. Juicy dead. A depressed, spiraling doctor is forced to wear a ruff made of shotgun shells, timed to go off if the ailing Jigsaw dies under her care. Jigsaw, not long for this world, does his best to set up four more movies from his sickbed, unfazed despite a seeming lack of reliable help. It’s the most maudlin of these movies, with rather pathetic victims. Jigsaw’s motivation for torment & torture comes off less dementedly altruistic than contrived, as if the most important thing is getting to tell people he knew what they’d do, emotionally teabagging them before they’re dismembered. But as an ersatz Ebert once said about McBain on The Simpsons, there’s still plenty of chills, thrills, spills...and kills! Best trap: the judge-seasoned pig broth. FIVE BAGS OF POPCORN.

Saw IV (2007)

An FBI team and a new batch of police detectives sift through the corpses of the last three movies only to find themselves either tortured or being asked to torture by yet more micro-cassettes and grainy videos of ventriloquy. The Project Greenlight guys behind Feast wrote this as part one of a second trilogy, and the effort to wed the soapy new story to the established narrative takes up most of the screen time. Wahlberg returns only to catatonically drool into his shaggy beard on top of a large ice cube (seriously). Most of the new leads appeared briefly in Saw III, and I’m curious if they were always intended to become important, or if the new writers were inspired to pluck out and beef up the roles after the fact. The latter better explains why Costas Mandylor wound up with his biggest role since Picket Fences & Zalman King’s Delta Of Venus more than a decade earlier. There’s still kills in this one (and chills, assuming that ice cube counts) but fewer spills and thrills. Best trap: the pinning of the Lockhorns. FOUR BAGS OF POPCORN.

Saw V (2008)

The ensemble for the central death trap plot is a step up from last time (Meagan Good! Julie Benz!). Watching the FBI chase the newer, more openly villainous Jigsaw is amusing. But there’s a problem: it doesn’t make a lick of sense that Jigsaw II, who obviously just gets off on killing people, would bother with putting together this particular exercise, which turns out to be the most perversely forgiving in the series. Why would the psycho offing cops just for getting too close busy himself with up lethal team-building exercises for randos at the same time? The ending is hilarious, though. I honestly hoped Jigsaw II was going to flip the guy off as he slowly peaced out. Best trap: the coffin full of broken glass that may not be what it seems. FOUR BAGS OF POPCORN. 

Saw VI (2009)

After a memorably frantic cold open (featuring the winner of the reality show Scream Queens!), Jigsaw II and the widow Jigsaw take on a “game” left in a box by Jigsaw with his will. Seems the muttering know-it-all wanted to be dead when he finally stuck it to an insurance executive and casual acquaintance who wouldn’t let him sign up for an experimental cancer treatment. Dude even picked out a new location for the death traps and everything! As fits the implication of a posthumous piece-de-resistance, this might be the most inspired movie since the first two, as if Jigsaw realized American health insurance was the cultural ill he could be the most gruesomely self-righteous about. Peter Outerbridge has an effectively squirmy, Dylan Baker-like energy as the schmuck who thought all’s fair in capitalism. And while the Jigsaw II storyline doesn’t end, it sure hits some kind of climax. This one has enough "woo!" moments that I wish I’d seen it in theaters. It might even become a Popcorn Classic if I ever watch it again. Best trap: Wheel! Of! Yuppies! FIVE BAGS OF POPCORN.

Saw: The Final Chapter (2010)

After settling a “nobody told me this film would be profitable when I did you a favor and signed on” lawsuit filed in 2005, Cary Elwes reportedly told producers that he didn’t want to return to the series until the final movie. And so he does here, his character a touch wobblier (and campier) for wear. Despite his identity being known to the police and being written out of his mentor’s will, Jigsaw II is still putting users and losers in monstrous Rube Goldberg designs, though ones that have a lot of dubious collateral damage (why are some people chosen to be tested and others just bloody grist for the mill?). Eventually he just starts shooting people, until an ending that’s more fan service than final. There’s a flashback where Tobin Bell attends a book signing in a backwards baseball cap, revealing a facial similarity to John Cusack I never noticed before. With Bell now 81 years old, maybe John could take over the role for any future prequels? Maybe between X and II Jigsaw went to Monte Carlo? Best trap: four skinheads, one car. Featuring Chester Bennington from Linkin Park! Dude sure could scream. FOUR BAGS OF POPCORN.

You see it, don't you? And it would be very ironic if the franchise died when Bell does. Off brand, really. Slice anything...