Saw

Live or die. Make your choice.

I was thinking back to 2004 when the missus and yours truly went and watched both Saw and The Grudge in the same day. I remember the poster for Saw, and it left this rather unsettling feeling that cried aloud inside me, “I’ve got to see this.” Simple, morbid curiosity.

Do you want to live or die? It is your choice. Saw and the many, many sequels (the Jigsaw ‘killer’ became the next generation of boogeyman) use a formula that was positively successful if more than a bit wicked: if you want to die, Jigsaw will give you that chance, but once death rears its ugly head, will you be willing to do anything to survive? The bread and butter of all of these movies are the death traps and the puzzles presented to those unluckily chosen by this mastermind genius who is dying of a tumor, inspired by his own death sentence to issue a sentence to others he feels aren’t appreciative of the lives they freely have. 

Despite some sketchy or uninspired performances along the way and how the franchise was marketed primarily on its bloody, disgusting kill devices and warped, elaborately designed games provoking the worst from those placed in Jigsaw’s psychological/pathological/homicidal traps inside the ugliest confines—abandoned warehouses/hellholes forgotten by the city for which the film takes place—I admired the devotion to storytelling and twists on characters you believe are legitimately one way but turn out to be either partakers in the very games once trapped in or in league with Jigsaw, deterring the police detectives out to stop the murders and increasing body count.

The first film sets up the franchise in a way that provides a menace who will be able to continue his dastardly work. The dead body on the floor in the godforsaken bathroom for which surgeon, Dr. Lawrence (Cary Elwes), and another young man, Adam (Leigh Whannell, who also wrote the diabolical screenplay), find themselves, as the film closes yields a rather unnerving development..the very one responsible for everything we've seen has been in the room the whole time, so patient and still, right there while our two principles were trying to determine a way out of their predicament. The person watching inside another room as a camera is confirmed to be recording Adam and Lawrence, is a ruse I admit I really admire. It tricks us into believing Jigsaw is looking on from the monitor of a room on the other side of the wall where our captives are trapped. It's a rug our feet are firmly planted on, jerked from under us. Everything that happens is all tied to a time line but the Saw franchise toys with structure, the final films deal with events prior to and after the first film. Jigsaw never completely leaves the franchise despite dying in the third film (not a spoiler since he was to die from the tumor, anyway), and other filmmakers play around with how characters are manipulated or manipulate. Jigsaw, however, seems, even after his death, to always have the upper hand. 

His ability to understand human nature, to exploit the weaknesses that each person he pulls into his sick world have, and the remarkable talent of planning ahead every step of the way seem preposterous, because are all humans so predictable? How can even someone with the intellectual acumen of a Jigsaw be able to expect everyone he chooses to act/react exactly as he plans? The one major thing you must take into account when watching a Saw film is that you can’t accept what you see, in behavior or action, on face value. A character or how they might act may not truly define who he/she really is.

In the first film, before having seen the numerous sequels, all you have is what you see presented before you. Lawrence seems like a workaholic doc who doesn’t give his wife or child the attention and affection they really deserve. He is having an affair with an intern, seems less than excited with his family unit, and treats his patients with little compassion: this is all a job and nothing more. No empathy or passion in his life.

We aren’t sure at the onset why these two in particular are stuck in the room, but the film does what it can to clue us in, until their frailties and flawed characters are made known. Little details might be important in later sequels, such as Dr. Lawrence Gordon’s possible connection to Jigsaw (a detective played by Danny Glover is obsessively possessed with proving Gordon’s involvement in the Jigsaw murders), and how inspiring the mastermind (the *real* Jigsaw) is to his potential pupils who will take up the mantle once he’s gone. Who Jigsaw is and what spurned him into action are briefly explained, but the sequels to come further explored his motives behind the madness.

The problem I have with the Saw franchise is how the police are often represented as idiotically walking right into Jigsaw’s traps and paying with their lives. Such stupidity (why not just get a warrant, bring a police task force with you, and case the abandoned mannequin factory so that all avenues are covered?) is frequent in the franchise. Glover, and his partner, goes into that factory without anyone else knowing, no back up, no officers accompanying them, and so if they are killed no one will know their location. It defies common sense and adds a level of ignorance to these detectives who have spent so much time and effort in catching their psychopath. So their fates aren’t surprising, and how it all transpires, a man strapped into a chair as spinning drills work their way towards his head, while the possible murderer, in a black cloak, dictates rules to the detectives if they wish to save an innocent man or arrest him, all leaves a feeling of, “You have got to be kidding me…” 

The Saw franchise does something here in this sequence that would become a standard, though. It feels like real time, as if it is happening while Lawrence and Adam are trapped in the room, but, in actuality, the detectives discovering Jigsaw’s lair (seeing a model of the room and how the men chosen would be placed in there) was *before* their imprisonment. This is how filmmakers play us as puppets on their strings: they are in control and we are jerked around in any direction they so choose. Just as the characters are by Jigsaw.

Jigsaw is almost God-like in how he can predict and determine what people will do before they respond to whatever problem/game is before them. This really does stretch credibility but that’s really part of the wicked fun of it all. At least, there’s some ingenuity and creativity behind the plots and characters, no matter how ludicrous they might be. Would the franchise hold up to close scrutiny? Probably not, but I have to admit that it is kind of neat seeing the writers and directors associated with Jigsaw toy around with us.

The end of Saw places an emphasis on the behavior of an orderly named Zep (Michael Emerson), why he’s so involved in the kidnapping of Lawrence’s wife and child, willing to even kill them if Dr. Gordon doesn’t obey the rules set before him in the murder of Adam at 6:00. Zep—like Gordon, Adam, and Glover’s cop—is another piece in Jigsaw’s master puzzle, testing the limits for which he’s willing to go to save his own life. Unlike Jigsaw, Zep isn’t operating with an intelligence that always produces positive results in his favor. Gordon’s wife is a fighter and will not just sit idly by and let her and their daughter be executed. Of course, Jigsaw knows Zep isn’t exactly the most reliable piece, but he serves his purpose. His Jigsaw recording’s discovery and how it related to Adam was a rather nifty way for the screenplay (and Wan’s direction which goes through the people and major events that brought us to this point, sped through in rapid succession) to lay it all out. Adam’s role in why he’s in the room, dealing with photographing men caught in compromising situations, as it pertains to Gordon, isn’t as interesting to me personally (he’s a sleaze who uses photography to pay the bills, little caring what his work does towards others), although who his client is just adds another layer to the plot. Glover’s cop always seems to get so close to saving the day, but each time he’s rendered incapable, even at the end when his quarry turns out to be Zep, someone not exactly as menacing as we are led to believe.

The goods, though. Shawnee Smith would be a vital character in the early part of the franchise, with this film introducing her in grand fashion, as she was an addict who had awaken to find herself in a head device that would crush her skull with immense force once a time limit expired if she didn’t cut open a friend (still alive, I might add) to find the key hidden inside him. Another victim was found caught in a grisly demise as his death scene, inside a cage filled to the gills with barbwire, shown that he was trying to get out, his wounds a testament to his desire to do so. A burned carcass related to us before and after when someone, exploiting a system arranged to help those in need of assistance, taking funds meant for the sick and disabled, must open a safe using a combination that could be somewhere on the walls surrounding him in the room, its floor rife with broken glass, his body covered in a flammable material, is yet another example of Jigsaw’s cunning and sick game. 

This is the version I watched.

The end with Gordon, so desperate to get home to hopefully save his family, picking up a hacksaw and willing to remove his foot from a shackle connected to a large chain, really drives home how maddening Jigsaw’s handiwork can be…those chosen by Jigsaw are never the same, some die horribly, but even the survivors are changed. That is important as the franchise continues…

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The ending had me thinking about the situation and why I think it works. The idea that we are living our comfortable lives, going through day-to-day operations, perhaps taking for granted how precious freedom to just move about is, only for it to be taken away, opening our eyes in a dark, unpleasant, filthy, rotten stinkhole, no one we love able to contact us, it is fertile ground for the horror genre. The theme of being buried alive, as an example, capitalizes on this inner fear that paralyzes our senses, and I feel that the thought of finding ourselves in a closed room, told we will either live or die by the rules of some sick, albeit brilliant, mind follows a similar mould of terror. Claustrophobic horror is always in season, because freedom is removed, and who really wants to die in some dank, shit-stained bathroom with the only exit a creaky sliding door, your ankles locked in place to rusty pipes, with only a little room to move, the way out hacking your foot away?