“I want to play a game.” The sinister and raspy voice echoes eerily from a cassette player indicating the start of an event that’s anything but fun in “Saw.”
Actor Tobin Bell is responsible for the voice and the iconic statement, and filmmaker James Wan is responsible for the “Saw” movie franchise from which it hails. Released in 2004, “Saw” is Wan’s feature film directorial debut and the movie can be credited with starting (or at least making mainstream) the horror sub genre of Torture Porn.
The original is something of a hybrid film, taking elements of horror, suspense, and police mystery to create the story. The rest of the series is anything but pleasant to watch, so stick with the original. There is great acting by all of the characters involved, coupled with some grisly and gruesome scenes that aren’t for the squeamish but are nonetheless littered throughout.
The movie opens in an ominous, video game like way with a corpse in the center of a room clutching a tape player amidst a pool of blood, and two men, played by Cary Elwes (“The Princess Bride“) and Leigh Whannell chained to opposite sides of the wall. Neither man knows why they are there or how they landed in the bizarre predicament in the first place.
“I went to bed in my shithole apartment.” Adam (Whannell) complains. “And I woke up in an actual shithole.” A recording advises the men that a game is being played, and that Lawrence (Elwes) has until 6 pm that evening to kill Adam or risk the death of his own wife and child.
With Lawrence and Gordon chained to the wall for the duration of the movie, the rest of the script is revealed through various flashbacks, interwoven with the aforementioned captives trying to escape. Danny Glover and Ken Leung are police detectives investigating a gruesome serial murderer known as the Jigsaw Killer, who is responsible for numerous deaths, though he’s not technically a murderer, since he finds ways for victims to kill themselves. This feat is done by placing those he has deemed targets in horrible devices that he creates, and they are given a time frame to free themselves or be brutally obliterated.
“Saw” includes a host or horror elements, specifically the dreary tones the movie is filmed in reminiscent of “Se7en,” and of course the now iconic Billy the Puppet, a bicycle riding dummy that beckons goosebumps with every on screen appearance. While not quite “The Sixth Sense,” “Saw” does have a twist ending that sees it go down as one of cinemas most unique.
The original “Saw” is a solid horror movie. Its police mystery offers a more in depth plot than many other options, and every other movie that follows in sequence. Its a perfect kickoff to our 7th annual #31DaysofHalloween.
by – Matt DeCristo
