The Saw Franchise

For a long time Halloween was just not Halloween for me if a new Saw film did not come out. I remember talking with a friend last year saying that it felt odd not having a new film out. With the Saw films I think you have to take them with a pinch of salt and to be honest some of them were not very good, interesting maybe but not very good.

What was interesting for me however was how interconnected they were between each other. Each new story told something more and you found out something more about Jigsaw, his legacy, what he was like before the tests and why the tests even started to begin with.

I am not going to review each film because I need to go to bed in the next two hours if possible which is why I have put this here. What I would like to do however is discuss the Saw franchise as a whole; what you thought was good, what you thought was bad, why it worked or didn't work and which was your favourite.

To this day the final scene in Saw gets to me, so as not to spoiler it for others I shall put it in spoilers because I think it is just wonderful:

Damn.

Ok look, the first Saw movie is just not that good, and the rest are even worse. A really green director (now much improved, admittedly) and a sophomoric writer/actor cobbled this thing together, and they blew a chance at making something new and fresh, trashing the final result with ****** editing tricks and a tacked-on police procedural. Danny Glover sleepwalks through his role, probably after drinking himself to sleep each night for committing career suicide. You list the final scene as an achievement, but I can't sit through it without laughing at how badly it comes off. Elwes is miscast, and he just can't pull the drama off without going into parody. I don't think these guys were making a comedy, but that's what we get with Elwes performance. Meanwhile, Leigh Whannel is a guy that just seems to turn anything he touches to garbage. He is like a talent vacuum that somehow makes the people working with him worse at their jobs. He can't act worth a ****, and Saw is his worst performance.

That said, I did like some of the camera work in the film, and the scene at the apartment with the flash is a GREAT idea and they execute it well. I just wish they executed the rest of the film on the same level, but it was a mess. The tension built nicely in the room in the first section, but kept getting shot to pieces when they kept cutting away to dud actors in a police procedural. I don't think the dramatic tension was thought out well enough to support both formats, and flashbacks are lazy in many instances, of which this is one.

Either make a film about all the previous people getting trapped and manipulated, or make a flick about a false situation in a room- don't show the more interesting material in flash while sub-par actors talk about it in a room while tied to a bathtub.

You know what I mean? The room film would be a good film on its own, building tension the entire time while still establishing the jigsaw stuff with traps in the same location or in a nearby room, all tied together in some creative way. OR, make the film about the people in the first set of traps, and then end up in the room halfway through the movie and finish out the room story that way. It just shows a misunderstanding of narrative tension to arrive at a result like we ended up with - like two half ideas smashed together in a clumsy way.

A missed opportunity, to be sure! It's a shame, because James Wan has talent and vision. I blame Leigh Whannell!

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See I think the flashes back and forth during the film were some of the best parts about it. It took film making and story telling in a different direction that I personally had never seen before (if it has been used I am simply not aware of it). I liked the moving around between the room and the things that happened to the victims, to me it just wouldn't have been as visceral a film if they had not included both. If it had just been in the bathroom it would just be two guys talking about past events that we knew very little about and if it had just been the set pieces it would have just been torture porn.

I agree Elwes was just bad, just plain bad, I could not get on board with him and when he cried "SHOW THEM TO ME!!!!" I just wanted to slap him! As for Whannell I thought he was very good in this, I found him to be entertaining, on time with his lines and someone who I could really get behind.

With regards to James Wan Sedai I am sorry but I have to disagree, I really really would love to see Wan make another good film but of the films I have seen he has made such as Insidious & The Conjuring just left me thinking "is this what horror is now? Is this really the best I can hope to expect?", the one thing I will say is Dead Silence by Wan and Whannell was genuinely creepy but to be fair it doesn't help that I hate dolls!

As for Glover? Well, he was there wasn't he....

I disagree a lot, in-fact, or at least, I disagree with the statement that the first Saw movie isn't that good. I thought it whenever they first did the movie, it had a very good concept with Jigsaw's trials and tribulations convincing him that he had been taking life for granted, and in a grotesque way, he wanted to teach others the same lesson. I thought that the flashbacks were extremely well-done, and some very consistent storytelling. I don't believe what a lot of people say about the Saw movies being "torture porn," as I think that the first five or so have heavy elements of storytelling. I am not saying that the first five had great storytelling, because quite honestly, I think everything after the third movie was borderline atrocious, but I do think that had every bit the storytelling as most other horrors.

Anyway, I think the first Saw movie is not only a good horror-flick, but amongst the best that I have ever seen. Before the first Saw movie, there hadn't ever been a concept quite like it, and it came at a time when the horror-genre had become dependent on bad slasher flicks. I don't think it's a missed opportunity, I think that, with the limited budget, they hit it out of the park with the first movie. The series itself was quick at over saturating itself in theaters, like most horrors do.

And as for windsoc's post about Dead Silence, Insidious, and The Conjuring: I think Insidious and its sequel were atrocious, and while I enjoyed Dead Silence, I admit that it isn't a good movie. The Conjuring on the other-hand is the first and only paranormal-based movie that I have ever watched that I considered to be great.

I saw this before there were any replies and didn't want to be the first. To be honest the first two movies were the only ones I could take seriously, and the second strained that. On some level I enjoyed the SAW Franchise just because I'm the type that either watches a series or doesn't. So, on board for the first, on board for the last.

After the third movie I just got tired of keeping track of that many strange plot twists and I could no longer sort characters I didn't care enough about to keep track of. In movies 4-7 I was literally just watching due to above mentioned personal viewing habits.

IMO Sedai is correct in terms of the over all series. A great premise was wasted on mediocre or worse sequels and most of that lies in *apparently* just being cheap and not developing characters (or paying A-list actors...or even B-List for that matter) that I couldn't be asked to care much about.

I will come out in favor of Elwes. I think the awkwardness was his touch on the role and while I may simply be out of my depth in making the assessment, I stand by it. Of course I've been a fan of his from his Princess Bride days, so I could be projecting extra love there for no reason. As for the rest of the series, Dina Meyer kept me interested for a short time due to her role in Starship Troopers, and Shawnee Smith due to her role in Stephen King's The Stand miniseries. Beyond that I just watched nameless, faceless extras come and go with "oh that was gross" or a "Huh. I was thinking one of these idiots might actually live once in awhile".

That's my take,

-Thanks

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"When old friends get together everything else fades to insignificance"

-War, Famine, Pestilence, Death

Saw is impeccable horror. I can completely understand it is not for everyone, but I always have a blast watching it. Nothing, however, replicates that first viewing, where its twist not only completely dumbfounded you, but also managed to be both equally spellbinding and fitting. It was pretty much perfect. I do think the (mostly) ghastly and shallow sequels has, to some extent, tainted the image of the first film. I'd imagine if Saw didn't spawn any sequels, it would sit much more favourably amongst film viewers. It seems now that people tend to associate Saw with an endless, overdone, and worn out horror franchise, and not necessarily the standalone greatness of the first film. Then again, it can be argued that the sequels do nothing but make Saw more recognisable, therefore generating more viewership and attention. I personally think the film comes across as more ineffective now to the average viewer than, say, 5 years ago, because the sequels have simply cashed in on the premise and replicated it monotonously, therefore not making it feel as fresh or 'new'. Still, this is not strictly confined to Saw, but various horror films in time that were later ripped off by other more substandard works, so I guess that notion isn't really applicable.

Back on topic, Saw is great. I have a soft spot for horror films, so perhaps I like it more than the average person, but I honestly think it is riveting, audacious - and unlike most horror films from the 2000s - not insipid, but alive. Yes, it is edited and shot like a MTV music video, yes, the acting is a bit choppy, but it had a real interesting story at its core and was directed with a great deal of flamboyance, even if it did come across as amateurish at times. Saw II was merely okay, as was its successor, but the rest were simply trite, devoid of any remotely 'good' writing, not to mention having completely lifeless direction and being riddled with cliches. It would have worked nice as a trilogy, but since they proved to be profitable and appealing, that was never really the case, despite the third film having decent closure.

Nice to see a thread for the series here. I know many hate it but I'm a huge fan of it and I kind of miss it being a yearly October tradition.

My ranking in order of preference would go:


Saw II
Saw
Saw VI
Saw V
Saw IV
Saw VII
Saw III


2 is my personal favorite but objectively I do think the original is the best in many ways.

The Saw films are guilty pleasures. Most of them are terrible films, with hilariously over the top gore, horribly written dialogue and exposition and mostly sub-par acting. The only good ones, in terms of quality, were the first and the sixth. But I still laugh my way through the bad ones and think of them as violent unintentional comedies.

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"George, this is a little too much for me. Escaped convicts, fugitive sex... I've got a cockfight to focus on."

these movies are grat at halloween time. set the mood.

Really good movies!