I seem to recall a time when the big, Halloween-released horror movie was a scary and frightening trip. “Saw” is an interesting film to watch, but an enormous let down for those people in the mood for a quality scare and an even bigger let down for those who are in the mood for a quality Halloween flick. “Saw” is a decent movie, if you were expecting a crime movie, but it doesn’t make that jump into being a ‘horror’ movie. This movie definitely got the art of being creepy down right, but apparently cut class the day they were talking about fantastic displays of fright or gore in the horror genre.
“Saw” opens in a dingy, abandoned bathroom, where Adam (Leigh Whannell, who also wrote the script) and Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) are chained to pipes on opposite ends of the room. Neither one can remember how they got there, how long they have been unconscious, or explain the dead body in the center of the room lying in a pool of blood. The only clues they have are from two micro cassettes, a tape player, and various goodies that have been hidden in the room.
Fortunately, Dr. Gordon has an idea as to who may have kidnapped the two: a psychopath known as the “Jigsaw Killer”. This is your typical kind of serial killer: trying to teach people lessons by putting them in life or death situations and setting up very elaborate situations for both his victims and the police. What the two do know is that if Dr. Gordon doesn’t kill Adam by 6:00, Dr. Gordon’s family is going to die.
James Wan (in his directorial debut) does a reasonable job of piecing the whole movie together, which already has a couple of significant of hurdles. One, it’s a horror movie, which instantly means that the movie should be scary and two, because it’s a horror movie, the script has rather sizable plot holes and more than a few contrivances. Getting the movie to work right isn’t helped by Cary Elwes presence in a main role: he manages to float by pretty well during the normal flow of the plot, but when it comes time for him to be excited or angry, his whole character becomes extremely British and very stiff. Plus, the whole movie is supposed to be a ‘Who Dunnit?’, which means you’ll probably find yourself gasping at the sheer idiocy on the part of both the good guys and the serial killer (but mostly just the good guys).
Despite these beefs, “Saw” manages to be reasonably palatable. The methods the Jigsaw killer comes up with are rather imaginative and creative, despite having an obvious tinge of “Fear Factor” to them. The filming and cinematography clearly indicates that the filmmakers know how to build the environment and tension as well as make the film look and feel professional (even though they use flash editing just to dramatize ‘boring’ segments. Additionally, I doubt anyone outside of the writing staff could see this twist-ending coming.
I suppose you can’t expect every horror movie to hit, but sometimes you see the trailer for one that could finally cut the mustard for being scary. This Halloween movie takes fewer notes from “The Birds” and “Poltergeist” and more from “Seven” and “The Usual Suspects”. These movies are excellent in more ways than one, but they just aren’t scary.
