Saw pioneered a whole new subgenre of horror and it deserves all the respect (Picture: Rex Features)
It’s been 20 years since Saw was released and, even with a franchise declining in quality, I’ve been unable to escape its trap.
My memories of first watching director James Wan’s classic after its release in 2004 are vivid; my cousins and I huddled on sofas in my grandma’s living room obsessively rewatching one of the twistiest horror movies we’d seen.
After two decades of multiple sequels and spin-offs, each becoming more outlandish than the last, it’s now easy to reduce Saw to just another one of Hollywood’s cash cow franchises – a cheap money grab with easy effects and low-effort storytelling.
However, it wasn’t always this way.
The first instalment of Saw, starring Leigh Whannell and Cary Elwes, carved out its niche in the horror genre which was seriously starting to lack innovation and intensely hellbent on serving us the supernatural; films like Ring, Signs, Ghost Ship, The Grudge, Jeepers Creepers and Final Destination were all released not long before Saw and we were very much living in the M Night Shyamalan era.
So when Saw did arrive with not a supernatural demon in sight – just a wheeling, dealing Jigsaw on his little bike – it felt like a breath of fresh air and, even better, it exceeded our expectations with an unprecedented twist that changed everything about the predictable horror trope. Of course, twists in horror were nothing new but the difference with the first Saw twist is that it was an ambitious payoff.
Co-written by Wan and Whannell, Saw follows a pair of strangers who are kidnapped by the murderous and faceless Jigsaw. They wake up in a dilapidated bathroom, before being forced to play Jigsaw’s ‘game’ in a bid to escape and save their and their families’ lives.
The twist is that right at the end (spoiler), victims Dr Lawrence Gordon (Elwes) and Adam (Whannell) discover that the person responsible for their kidnapping has actually been in the room with them the whole time. Throughout the film, we’re shown a male corpse on the floor, which we were led to believe was another of Jigsaw’s victims.
However, it turns out that the ‘corpse’ has been the real killer all along – John Kramer aka Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) who masterminded the entire game. We slowly see him rise from the floor like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon giving Dr Gordon, Adam and us the shock of our lives. He had taken a drug to slow down his heart rate, hence no movement.
The exciting thing about Saw 1 is that it pushes you to frantically ask yourself what you would do in that situation. Would you trust the stranger you’re trapped with? Would you saw off a limb to save yourself? Would you play along with Jigsaw’s game?
It presents you with very real questions in an extreme situation and that’s probably what drew in such …read more
Source:: Metro
