31 Years, 31 Screams: Saw Posted by J.D. Dunn on 11.01.2007
Let the games begin!
Okay, so I'm a little late on some of these, but what better way to end the series with a drive-in double feature? And you don't even have to drive anywhere.
Not sure if you were aware...but Tobin Bell, the guy who plays Jigsaw in the Saw movies coaches little
league baseball in NY...
just some things I wanted your thoughts on...
How many parents WONT let their kids play for him
because he's a horror villain?
How many kids WANT to play for him for that same
reason?
Do opposing coaches tease him and say "Hello coach
Bell, I wanna play a game...if my pitcher gets your
batter to miss three times...he's out."
Do umps tease by yelling "let the game begin" in an
evil voice instead of "play ball"
If his team loses do opposing coaches say "Good game,
please don't be a sore loser and chain me to a pipe"
your thoughts?
Thanks
Bryan
Honestly, the idea of Bell sending out the signal, "Swing or bunt…it's your choice," is exceedingly funny.
And don't you just love it when an e-mail helps segue into a column?
Saw (2004) Director: James Wan Writer: James Wan and Leigh Wannell Starring:Cary Elwes, Leigh Whannell, Danny Glover, Shawnee Smith, Monica Potter and Dina Meyer. MPAA: [Unrated] Runtime: 103m.
Some films just work on premise alone. Snakes on a plane. Vampires in Alaska. Terrorists hijack Air Force One. James Wan's Saw is such a film.
Imagine, if you will, awakening in a tub of water in a dirty, disgusting restroom. You don't remember how you got there, and you find that you're chained to the wall. In the room, there is a dead body, apparently the victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Someone else is in the room, on the opposite side. He's chained up too. Whoever has brought you down here wants to play a sick and twisted game of willpower. Through an elaborate series of clues, the killer (who we come to know as Jigsaw) reveals that he's kidnapped the other guy's family and is willing to kill them. However, Jigsaw tells the other guy that he will release him and his family. All he has to do is – kill you.
That is the premise of Saw, and, for the most part, it's what drives the entire movie. The hapless fool in the tub is Adam (screenwriter Leigh Whannell). The other guy is Dr. Lawrence Gordon (The Princess Bride's Cary Elwes), a philandering-but-decent man caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Gordon tells Adam about the Jigsaw killer. He first learned about him a few months earlier when he was accused of being the killer. Detective Tapp (Danny Glover, lending a bit of class to the proceedings), the detective assigned to the case, brought him in to listen to the story of one of the survivors (The Blob's Shawnee Smith). She described a similar story. She awoke in a room with an unconscious man, her mouth bound with a sort of "reverse bear trap" that would snap her jaw open at the end of a time limit. To get the key, she would have to stab the man's body and cut him open. Reluctantly, she did so, even though he was still alive.
Now, Gordon finds himself in a similar situation. Jigsaw has provided him with proof that his family has been kidnapped…and the clock is ticking. This would be enough of a moral quandary, but Gordon isn't sure he can even trust Adam. Adam, it turns out, is a sleazy photographer hired to catch Gordon in one of his trysts.
And, for the most part, that's your film. A race against the clock for Gordon and Adam to figure out some way around their predicament.
Horror guru Stephen King once divided the horror genre into three different levels:
- Terror: the finest emotion that an author/director can exploit. Terror is the thing that shakes us to our core. Before man ever pondered the moon and the sun, he said, "Holy shit! There's a fucking bear over there!" It's something that exists from birth and transcends culture, race, and gender.
- Horror: a step down from terror. This is based on our societal conventions. It exists on a slightly more intellectual level. The idea of bugs in your food. The thought of your jack collapsing the chassis on your chest and dying a slow death as motor oil drips gradually onto your forehead. While there is fear involved, it works on a personal level.
- The Gross-out: the easiest to achieve, the girl in school every guy wants to date at least once. An eyeball popping out of its socket, someone ripping your fingernail off, a Bea Arthur/Morley Safer sex tape. You get the idea.
The most effective films tend to mine that terror vein and come up with a lot of gold. Think of how little gore there is in Halloween and yet it's constantly cited as one of the great horror films of all time. Carpenter managed a minor miracle, creating a sense of terror throughout. It's something that he's never quite been able to replicate.
Take another Carpenter film, The Thing, as an example of horror. For claustrophobics like me, the film is downright unnerving. Others are left cold (no pun intended). It does have a number of good gross-outs, though. "Ew, a spider-head!"
Saw tends to run the gamut. A character swishes his hand in feces to find an important clue. A woman sifts through guts to find they key that could save her life. All of these are darned good gross-outs. But the film creates such a horrific premise – kill or be killed – that each of its scenes brings with it a sense of dread. Not only does it put its characters in moral quandaries, it asks them what they'll be like on the other side of that decision.
The 411:Saw films have become something of a Halloween tradition, and with good reason. Whereas its contemporaries have focused on unseen terrors, often watering down content for the PG-13 set, Saw has remained true to horror roots. If nothing else, a horror movie should make the viewer say, "Damn, I'm glad that's not me." Saw certainly does that. A
