My First Time … Watching ‘Saw’

October is not my favorite month for movies. That’s partially because we are smack between the big summer blockbusters and prestige winter dramas. That’s also because I have never been a big fan of horror films. Slasher flicks, ghost stories, and monster movies simply don’t appeal to me. So, it should come as no surprise that I purposely avoided the horror juggernaut Saw. Well, James Wan’s gorefest is celebrating its tenth anniversary today, and as a sarcastic joke, I said to the Decider Team, “Hey, I’ll watch Saw for the first time!”

My co-workers did not think this was a joke. My co-workers thought I was serious. And so, I had to watch Saw.

Here’s what I know about Saw: 1) It’s supposed to be scary. 2) It has to do with people given the choice to saw off a limb or be killed by a sadistic murderer. 3) There’s a maniacal clown puppet named Jigsaw that might be a murderer. 4) There’s a twist. Like, the murderer is the dead guy in the room the whole time. Or he’s Cary Elwes. Or something.

I don’t know if any of that is right, but I’m about to find out. This is my first time watching… Saw.

0:58 – I already jumped. Sound effects get me every time.

4:24 – So, yeah, these two dudes are locked together in a creepy room with a dead guy in the middle of the room. Something tells me that this is going to be a super gory Waiting For Godot and something also tells me that this film isn’t going to pass the Bechdel test.

9:47 – As soon as I heard, “You might be in the room that you die in,” I laughed. That’s a funny line. Whoever wrote this movie should write for late night.

12:24 – That said, if the writer wanted to drum up more sympathy for Cary Elwes, he should have swapped the line, “Alison and Diana will die,” with “Buttercup will marry Prince Humperdink.” Because then I would feel immediate sympathy and understand what a high-stakes situation this guy was in.

14:21 – Oh, look! SAWS.

15:20 – Is this what these bros call sawing? These guys just gave up. You’ve got to file that metal down, son! It takes time!

16:14 –  Cary Elwes gives us some much needed, and possibly false (???), backstory…

19:25 – This is movie is so utterly ridiculous. These murder schemes are so complicated and absurd that it makes the show Hannibal look rooted in reality. “You need to open the safe, the combination’s on the walls, the floor is covered in glass, you’re naked, you have a lighter, you’re covered in lighter fluid…bwahahaha!”

24:35 – HEY CREEPY ROBOT PUPPET GUY.

26:55 – I mean, when you’re stuck between a rock and a reverse bear trap, you’ve got to murder some random bro. Maybe she didn’t make the ethical choice, but she made the smart choice.

41:56 – Is Michael Emerson Jigsaw? Is Danny Glover Jigsaw? Is Cary Elwes Jigsaw? All I know is that Danny Glover’s foreboding monologue is HILARIOUS. “Are you waiting for the doctor? I’m waiting for the doctor? I’m never going to let you gooooo.”

48:54 – OMG! I LOVE DIARAMAS!

51:09 – This will be gruesome. I can tell.

51:57 –  Oh, well, so much for Danny Glover’s hilariously over the top monologues. I’m going to miss them.

53:24 – Woof. This also looks bad.

54:13 – Oh, thank goodness. We just watched a flashback. That means we get MORE Glover-logues.

1:00:10 – Now, this could be a scene from a horror film or a student art film from Germany. That sort of mystical ambiguity tickles my funny bone. What I’m saying is this, too, made me laugh.

1:04:54 – Dear God, I’ve seen toddlers who have absolutely no concept of death fake their own demise better than this.

1:12:23 – Wait a minute. Is Adam the liar? Is Cary Elwes the liar? Is Jigsaw the liar? I don’t know. I will argue, though, that this entire movie is lying to us. This movie is a lie! LIES!

1:22:51 – Oh, so Jigsaw is Michael Emerson. At least, that’s what the movie wants us to believe, and I’m reticent to go along. I was promised a twist and this feels a bit obvious.

1:26:42 – This is an accurate visual representation of how the logic of this movie makes me feel.

1:30:05 – I’m surprisingly not grossed out by this. It seems like something that should have happened in the film’s first 30 minutes.

1:34:21 – Whoa. A lot just happened in four minutes. Cary Elwes sawed off his leg. Then, he shot Adam in the stomach. Then, Michael Emerson came in, but Cary Elwes didn’t have any more bullets left in his gun. Adam sprang back to life and pummeled Michael Emerson’s skull with a toilet tank cover. Now, these two might make out.

1:36:25 – Yassssss…. THE TWIST! MICHAEL EMERSON WASN’T JIGSAW. THE DEAD BODY WAS!

1:38:49 – So, the point of Saw is that cancer blows and that we should all be grateful for our lives, lest a madman with a frontal lobe tumor decides to orchestrate an intensely elaborate murder game for us. Okay.

Final Thoughts: 

While I watched this, my co-worker asked what I thought of James Wan’s direction. At first I considered this a peculiar question because I found his camera work to be frenetic and almost frustrating at times. Everything in this movie hangs thematically on the word, “jigsaw.” Yes, there are saws in the film, but murder kills with puzzles. A jigsaw puzzle is something that looks like a bunch of random pieces if you pour it out of the box in a pile, but it’s really a bigger picture cut down into technically exact pieces. I guess Wan’s direction plays with this. It’s technically precise and there are a lot of literal cuts. (I’m talking about cinematic cuts, and not just referring to all the gore.)

However, I still feel like Wan’s camera lied. Details weren’t just obscured, they were omitted until deemed valuable. That kind of really pisses me off, but at the same time, I tip my hat to Wan because he lets Adam make the false point that his camera never lies. Cameras always lie. They can only contain a small frame of truth; never the whole picture.

Camera techniques aside, Saw surprised me. It’s not that I found the film nightmarishly scary. I found it so over-the-top, so absurd, that it was delightfully hilarious. It took tried and true tropes to such an extreme that it almost veered into satire. So, yeah, I laughed a lot. Maybe this is a sign that I should watch more horror movies.

Oh, and this film actually did pass the Bechdel Test! When Alison takes off Diana’s bindings, they are in the room together alone and never mention a man. Good for you, Saw. You managed to surprise me in more ways than one.

Where to stream Saw.

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[Photos: Lionsgate]