Nicholas Thurkettle

Originally posted 11/17/04

Saw
Director: James Wan
Writer: Leigh Whannell
Producers: Mark Burg, Gregg Hoffman, Oren Koules
Stars: Cary Elwes, Leigh Whannell, Danny Glover, Monica Potter

Something I both love and hate to do, after watching a movie about a serial killer who devises fiendish, sadistic killings and plays head games with his pursuers, is to ask myself: How exactly did the killer want things to unfold? And, given what is possible within the limits of the killer’s ability to plan, did the movie play fair?

Much of the action of Saw, an imaginatively grisly but ultimately sloppy and disappointing thriller, revolves around two men (Dr. Gordon, played by Cary Elwes, and Adam, played by writer Leigh Whannell) chained at opposite ends of a room. There are a few key props meant to help them understand what’s going on and possibly, possibly, escape their circumstances alive. They frequently have to toss the props (photographs, a small key, the titular cutting implement) back and forth across the room. If once, just once, a prop had say, landed out of reach in the middle of the room as the result of a bad toss, what would the killer have done? Would he reveal himself in order to retrieve the prop so his puppets could carry on his elaborate little game? Or would he let his whole plan go down the tubes because one of his victims can’t throw?

It doesn’t matter. Saw, heavily influenced by the superior Se7en, is like a sampler platter of the ghastly, a rough assemblage of variably intense and bloody vignettes that sometimes work in the moment, but become more and more frustrating as time rolls on and we realize that no explanation can make this movie’s contrivances hold water.
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Saw VI
Director: Kevin Greutert
Writers: Screenplay by Patrick Melton & Marcus Dunstan
Producers: Mark Burg, Oren Koules, Gregg Hoffman
Stars: Tobin Bell, Costas Mandylor, Shawnee Smith, Betsy Russell, Peter Outerbridge, Mark Rolston, Athena Karkanis, Samantha Lemole

“I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood”
     -The Animals

Machinery is what The Jigsaw Killer (Tobin Bell) specialized in during his life, and since the Saw franchise that chronicles his exploits has now succeeded in making three sequels after the death of its main character, it is fitting that those sequels feature machines he built or conceived of in life, that are still grinding thoughtlessly on without him. And Saw VI does feature a saw – by my recollection, every film in the series thus far has contained at least one, and you have to think they make sure of things like that.

I have seen all the Saw movies, originally created by director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell, and have not thought a single one good. But Saw VI, which shows the franchise out of ideas and beyond the threshold of self-parody, has a way of reflecting back on what few morsels of promise existed in the early movies. In hindsight they find themselves improved, now that I have seen how it is possible for them to be worse.
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