We move into number 45 with a horror movie that was just not what I was expected with a three-letter movie title that conjured up images of gore and nasty business which is ‘Saw’. It is a story written by Leigh Whannell and James Wan with James also directing the movie. Screenplay credit went to Leigh Whannell and was produced by Gregg Hoffman, Oren Koules and Mark Burged. Released in 2004 and for 2004 it had a ridiculously small budget of $1.2m whilst this movie success can be seen in the $103.9m return from the box office. This movie has its critics and complaints about being gore-porn and just a movie about the human body being cut up and tortured in various ways. The Tri-critic challenge would not be challenged here as Rotten Tomatoes gave this less than half with a 49% whilst unusually IMDb gave it more credit with a score of 7.6 out of 10. The movie stars Cary Elwes (as you wish), Danny Glover, Monica Potter, Michael Emerson, Ken Leung, Tobin Bell, and Leigh Whannell. There are some big names in there and the success of this movie meant it went onto to spawn a host of sequels and spin off merch and other things, such as rides at theme parks and it’ll be wheeled out at Halloween events also. I will attempt to give you an overview of the plot as the plot and the consensus surrounding this film, it did suck me in and in made my pre-movie opinion incorrect according to me anyway. It is not the movie I was expecting which is why I gave it the score I did (I was pleasantly surprised).
Adam Stanheight is a photographer who awakens in a bathtub, his ankle is chained to a pipe and across the room from him is another man also chained at the ankle. This other man is Dr Lawrence Gordon an oncologist and in between the two men are three things. The first thing is a corpse which is holding a revolver and a microcassette player/recorder. Both men find cassettes in their pockets. Adam retrieves the recorder and plays his tape it is a message that urges him to escape. Passing it to Lawrence’s message is slightly different with him being told that he must kill Adam by six o’clock or his wife Alison and daughter will be killed. Adam finds a bin bag inside a toilet which containing two hacksaws. Both men then try to escape by cutting through the chains. Dr Gordon soon realises that the hacksaws will never get through the chains in time and they are meant for each man to cut off their own feet to escape. Dr Gordon works out that they must have been captured by the Jigsaw Killer a serial killer on the lose who tests his victims ‘will of survival’ through murderous contraptions which he or she sees as ‘games’ for his victims to survive. Dr Gordon was once a suspect which is why he knows the signs, one of his penlights at one of the scenes of a Jigsaw games. He was cleared with an alibi but agreed to view the testimony of a heroin addict Amanda Young who is the only known survivor of one of Jigsaw’s games. Meanwhile the police are slowly piecing together the clues to find who Jigsaw is and have traced him to a warehouse. Where they believe they have him cornered before triggering a trap which allows him to escape. With the trail narrowing the two men are stuck without a way out and a clock ticking on their own ‘timed death’ for not complying with Jigsaws demands.
I must admit that I was not expecting to enjoy this movie and I will also say that I watched the sequel and then the third instalment and then I checked out. For me, the story had run its course and I was not interested in anything more. It did not begin the gore-porn that it was blamed for. What it did do was give licence to the following movies to descend into the films people expected in the first place and not the film that was on sale in the first place. This movie has a plot twist that completely took me by surprise and yes it does have a gore element that is just unpleasant to think about, but this was a very clever movie. It promoted and appeared as one thing and then whipped off the mask to reveal something completely different. It was completely not the film I was expecting and one that I realised ahead of the second movie as I worked out the second movie from incredibly early on and it was exactly what I thought it would be. This one on the other hand threw me completely as I didn’t see this result coming at all. When a movie beats me, I have respect for it. Now it must trick me and not just be so freaky and weird that no one could work it out, but the signs are there I just missed them. So, I raise my hat to this movie and suggest you give it a chance, but I do so with the warning that there is gore in here and it is cringy and not wanting to watch type. You have been warned and you have also been encouraged to give this movie a chance.
Next up is a classic 80’s comedy about doing nothing when they actually do so much…
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