Saw - sickest ever?

DC

I saw Saw yesterday. It was an unheralded film. No trailers to be seen, nothing in advance of the film's launch. And there it was on the cinema listings. I did a bit of research as I always do before forking out so much cash on the cinema, and I was amazed at how positive all the reviews were for a film that nobody knows about.

So I went along and found a real gem of a film. One of my favourite films of all time is Se7en. It was a new breed of film at the time and nothing since has come close, until now. This has one hell of a sick serial killer, only he is a killer by proxy - or rather his victims are. You see, ultimately this freak puts his victims in situations where there is a way out. But getting out usually involves killing someone else or dying a horrific death.

Anyway, I don't want to review the film or give away too much. I think people should go and see this film to see something really different. While it shares some of Se7en's main theme about ritualistic killings, this film enters new territory of its own. If you are squeamish, you may not want to go and see this film. For me this is a 5 star film.

I will say one thing about the film that gives something away, but I have to talk about it. There are scenes that go down in infamy in cinematic history. I am talking about scenes like the ear cutting in Resevoir Dogs or the alien coming out of the chest in Alien. This for me adds a new one....

Picture this. A sicko tells you that if you do not kill the other person in the room by 6pm, both your wife and daughter will be killed. You are shackled by the leg to a big pipe. You have a bullet, but the gun is in the middle of the room out of reach. The other guy is also shackled. One of the tools the sicko has given you is a hacksaw. You try cutting the chain, but the hacksaw just can't get through stainless steel. But it will go through flesh and bone......

One other thing to talk about is the web-site. Please go and visit www.sawmovie.com and prepare to be amazed by a site that reveals a lot of the sick stuff that goes on in the film. Follow the links in the Flash movie and look for hidden links (move your mouse all over the screen). Best viewed on a broadband connection. The site is really creepy and atmospheric and has to be the best movie promo site ever.

vibe666

thanks for the review, i'll be off to see it this weekend.

oh, and there have been some trailers over the last week or so, i think you must have just missed them.

seamus

Excellent, both me and my brother were sitting watching TV when the trailer came on. When it over we turned to eachother and said "That looks pretty savage dunnit?".

Zombienosh

yeah i seen all the trailers on tv for it
looks pretty damn cool

ixoy

Saw it last night and it's highly recommended. There's loads of fiendishly inventive moments of pure and utter evilness I don't know what disturbed mind thought up the scenarios in these movies but more power to them! And how incredibly great was

the ending! I never saw it coming! One of the best movie endings I've seen in years

. See saw see saw see saw.

Mr E

DC - you should edit your post and put a message in big bold writing not to read this thread until they've seen the movie. The less known about it (other than the fact that its pure f'ing GENIUS!), the better!

Absolutely loved it. I left it with a big grin from ear to ear. :)
(I definitely want to see it again!)

Basq

I've been posting and raving about 'Saw' on Boards.ie for the last few months with links to trailers / teasers so anyone who says there's been little or no word about it obviously wasn't reading my posts.

I read tons of great reviews about the film from websites online who first saw it at film festivals last year and i thought there was no way this film could live up to the hype that i've seen about it online but I saw it last night and thought it was utterly brillant!!

Very sick, very violent, very bloody and with a great ending to boot!

By the way, to everyone who's seen it, Adam (the photographer guy in the basement in the white shirt) also wrote the screenplay to the film.

The only thing i think that somewhat let the film down was there was some below par acting at parts, especially from Cary Elwes... his English accent also seemed to jut out at points near the end where he was screaming. Though Leigh Whannel (Adam) impressed me with both his acting and writing for the film.

This film is definantly not for everyone... the

leg slicing scene

is especially gruesome and will probably disgust a lot of people! The scares come pretty fast... and i think most people will jump (or at least get a brief scare) at the scene with

Adam using the flash of his camera to illuminate his apartment

.

But i for one think it was one of the best cinema films for quite some time! I say this as it is not a film to see on video... pay the extra €4 and go to the cinema to see this!

Believe me, all the hype i've heard has been well justified!

SEE THIS FILM NOW!!!

***** / *****

segadreamcast

I was convinced that this movie WASN'T coming out after no review columns covered it. I even checked this forum on Wednesday looking for someone complaining about it (because I remembered basquille heralding it some months ago).

Regardless, I'll be sure to try and catch this on Saturday night now.

Basq

NoelRock wrote:

I was convinced that this movie WASN'T coming out after no review columns covered it. I even checked this forum on Wednesday looking for someone complaining about it (because I remembered basquille heralding it some months ago).

Regardless, I'll be sure to try and catch this on Saturday night now.

Cheers for the mention!

Yeah, i knew the film was coming out this weekend. And searched through papers to find reviews of it - found none! Then, i found the reason why there was none in the Day And Night magazine in the Indo. Apparently, there wasn't a preview print sent in times for critics screenings or something. It'll probably be reviewed in most papers next week.

The only new reviews i found for Saw were in Empire Magazine (Gave it 4 / 5. Read the review online here). And on Entertainment.ie, there's also a review (gave it 3 / 5).

Anyone who hasn't seen it yet, and isn't too squeamish of blood and all things violent, should definantly go see it again! Don't bother with that 'Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow' crap or 'Man About Dog' (even though i loved Paddy Breathnach's 'I Went Down' - this looks terrible!).

I can definantly see 'Saw' becoming a cult classic!

Giblet

Great movies, although some of the scenes could of been done better (I didn't like the fast cuts) I thought the film was a bit wierd because

You never seem to know too much about any of the characters, for example Danny Glover just seemed to be playing a small bit-part in the movie until I realise that unlike Se7en, he WON'T be the guy solving the case, but just more fodder

Any one else think that Cary Elwes sounds like Snake from MGS at the start?

gre_soul

SAW aint Se7en, not even close, the acting is so bad

Phil_321

Saw:) it yesterday. Thought it was a bit crap. There was no genuine moments of terror or things that would leave you thinking after the film ended. It was a bit of a Se7en ripoff, but it lacked the intelligence and great acting of that film.

Even when he cut through his foot it wasn't that big a deal, shockwise, in this day and age when you can see 10 times worse **** on the net any day. If the guy had more character and you could empathise with him, and they played the psychological rather than gruesome angle, this scene could have been memorable.

Pugsley

DC wrote:

Picture this. A sicko tells you that if you do not kill the other person in the room by 6pm, both your wife and daughter will be killed. You are shackled by the leg to a big pipe. You have a bullet, but the gun is in the middle of the room out of reach. The other guy is also shackled. One of the tools the sicko has given you is a hacksaw. You try cutting the chain, but the hacksaw just can't get through stainless steel. But it will go through flesh and bone......

Nothing new, there was something VERY similar in one of the Mad Max series where yer man had to cut through his own leg, but by the sounds of things this film could be quite good, so Ill reserve judgement until I actually see the film

Spunog UIE

wasn't really shocked by any of it, but I have to say, the puppet thing coming out on the trike had me in stitches laughing, something so feckin weird and funny about it. Liked the ending too very well done, after Dr. Gordon crawled away that is (also something quiet funny about that 'cya later, would I lie' bit).

I personally found the toliet lid thing smashing into your man to be more gruesome than hacking off a bit of leg.

pretty damn good, go see it.

Juggalo

I thought it was good. But I wouldn't put it beside the likes of Se7en. I felt the acting let it down alot.

Smellyirishman

Brilliant, absolutly brilliant.

I thought this film was a stoke of genious (not to hard to convince me of this after the months of utter ****e iv been going to see for the last 6-10+ months)

Some excellent scenes and the writing, dont even get me started on the writing, pure class

I loved the

Scene with adam walking around the apartment with the camera, that was brilliant

Go and see this movie right now!
If you have been pleased with any recent films then your bound to love this one!

Wow, great film

rob1891

Acting is really awful, especially as it all comes to a close. Audiance was laughing at the Doctor and his screams of agony. Script also gets very bad at the end, dialogue is pathetic at points. Idea is good, twist is very good but instead of leaving the cinema trying to fit the twist into the rest of the story and seeing how it all makes sense (like in a g-o-o-d movie), you quickly change the topic of conversation from how much that just cost and how those hours are never to be returned, to the Senior Women's All Ireland Football Final ... true story!!!

damien

Nothing new added to this genre. Pace was too slow. I would never have guessed there was going to be a twist ! I lie. It was obvious there was going to be a bloody twist.

Not dark enough, not one scary scene, the acting did it a major disservice too. I had no sympathy for any of the characters. Danny Glover's talents were totally wasted. The script was like a first draft and needed a lot of fixing and polishing but never got them.

koneko

You know, I must be one sick puppy because the film wasn't even sick enough for me

I was hoping for lots of scenes like the

leg slicing

one. Good film. Some shaky acting there but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Recommending it to my sicko mother and friends now!

It works quite well I thought, nice build up of tension, some "amateur-moviemaking tactics" (like the shaky camera during the lockjaw scenes) that I thought worked well and enjoyed. I'd recommend the film to anyone that is into this sortof film.

mycroft

koneko wrote:

You know, I must be one sick puppy because the film wasn't even sick enough for me

Koneko, you should check out audition If you haven't already

The last half of the film gets a little trippy and then finally finds us sitting through one of the longest, sickening S&M scenes ever to hit my television screen.

Never before in the cinema have myself and my mate literally sat with our coats in our hands in a weird game of chicken to see which one of us would walk out fist.

D-FENS

Saw is weel worth a look alright and certainly a improvement on other serial killer movies of recent years like Bone collector and Kiss the girls, but it's no where near Se7en or even the BBC's Messiah.
It was thought provoking but as someone else metioned the script did need some fine tuning , i love flashback scenes ( always creepy for some reason) but on a couple of occasions it was unclear for a minute or two if a scene was in present time or in the period 5 months before hand.
The cast was ok , Glover was underused but he ain't exactly a A list celeb anymore.
And i found Cary Elwes difficult to watch in such a serious role after the likes of Hot Shots and The Princess Bride , that Leslie Philips voice is commical at times. In fact , the way he speaks to his daughter in her bedroom was exactly like him in Liar, Liar ( Oh, look at the claw! )
The speeded up killings scenes was an interesting idea but Se7en's policy of less is more is the most effictive way to portray a murder.

koneko

Ah yeah, seen it ages ago, I remember actually pimping that film to boardsies before anyone was talking about it. People finally saw the light

ObeyGiant

One of the nice things about the UGC Unlimited card is the fact that you can easily apologise for seeing bad movies, and justify it to your bank balance by saying "well, this was one of the free movies I'll see this month".

Saw was this month's free movie. I'm trying desperately to make it into this year's free movie, because Saw was easily the most ridiculous movie I've seen all year.

Take a first-time director, a notoriously bad actor as your lead man, and add twist after twist after twist, and this is what you'll end up with. A steaming pile of smug, self-satisfied nonsense.

The movie had promise, I guess. And it provided a couple of good, psychological scares. "There's a monster in my closet" kind of things never really affected me before. But it's hard to justify them in the face of so many negative points.

First, we have the acting. The best Cary Elwes can do, acting-wise, is to play camp and hope for the best. He's made a pretty successful career of it, so far, but I can't help feel he should have maybe tried something else as his return to "dramatic" acting. Perhaps something whose fortunes didn't entirely rely on a convincing performance from him.

And Danny Glover was the most pointless black man in a film since Scatman Crothers in The Shining.

I was grinning for most of the movie, but the last ten minutes left me angry and apalled. The final twist reeked of "See what we did there? Did you? Didn't guess that, did you? See?", and its attempt at aping Se7en's head-in-a-box sequence, the big payoff at the end, was weak, bordering on farcical.

In the hands of a better director, this movie could have been really good. In the hands of someone still clutching his Trent Reznor albums and refusing to believe it's not 1997, it's not.

(edit - scarman? I must have been drunk)

Fysh

Obeygiant wrote:

I was grinning for most of the movie, but the last ten minutes left me angry and apalled. The final twist reeked of "See what we did there? Did you? Didn't guess that, did you? See?", and its attempt at aping Se7en's head-in-a-box sequence, the big payoff at the end, was weak, bordering on farcical.

I agree. Watched it last night, surrounded by an audience who laughed at *everything*, and I was disappointed.

It started out well enough, some interesting scenes (although the fast cuts were crap) and what is, in essence, a good premise and storyline. Unfortunately, after a while, the acting started to degenerate and it was unclear what the two guys were thinking or trying to do. The successive "twists & turns" of the storyline become more clichéd, until any sympathy you had for the characters is lost because they're 2-dimensional.

And then, the ending....The last fifteen minutes made me want to hit someone. Awful acting, particularly

leading up to & after the leg cutting scene, and not just by the guy doing the cutting

. It was obvious for the duration of the film that a twist was coming, but it's been a while since I saw a twist as lame as this. Aggravatingly, the way it was implemented gave me short-lived hope that it might be a good twist :

we find out that the real psycho isn't Zap - he's just another part of the puzzle. And then the body that has lain motionless in the middle of the room gets up, and we realise that we've been duped. Instead of ending then, with the more psychological horror of realising we have no idea who the villain is, we then get a laughable explanation & justification of who our villain is.

This could, and should, have been much better. But as it stands, it's pretty crap, and all the more so because it appears that at least some of the people involved in its making were aware of how good it might have been...

Makaveli

Went to see it this afternoon.
I wanted to like it, I really did, but I thought it was pretty crap.
The acting was pretty awful,

When Adam was pretending to be poisoned had to be the most ridiculous part in the film. Was that supposed to be comic relief?

Also the dialogue towards the end

after he shot him in the shoulder and was crawling away to get help was poor too.

A lot of people were laughing through it. Especially towards the end. It was pretty laughable. Started out well then just went downhill so quickly.

Don't believe the hype.

Swifty

Was dying to see this after reading the positive posts about it on this thread. Went to see it tonight and it didn't really live up to all the talk for me. The main actor (the doctor) is an absolutely laughable actor. Everyone around me were laughing at him towards the end. The whole film just seemed so rushed and thrown together, it was like they had this idea of two guys in a room chained together and thought they'd make up the rest of the plot as they went along. It was full of stupid stuff like Adam only remembering how he got there halfway through the film. "Hey wait I remember absolutely everything now, it just came to me and I can explain it in exact narrative detail"

Danny Glover is just past it, did he say one interesting thing in the film? Oh, apart from "I'm gonna git you, you sick mudda****a!". He also seems to be the most retarded cop EVER. As he is firing his gun at the end of the film he uses all the bullets in the clip and then looks at his gun in astonishment as if to say "HAY WHEY ISENT IT FIERING ANYMOER"

the less said about the completely retarded way he dies the bloody well better

The twist was stupid because as Fysh said, we don't know who the hell this guy is until were given a thrown together explanation.

Fairly poor film IMO.

CyberGhost

DC wrote:

I saw Saw yesterday. It was an unheralded film. No trailers to be seen, nothing in advance of the film's launch. And there it was on the cinema listings. I did a bit of research as I always do before forking out so much cash on the cinema, and I was amazed at how positive all the reviews were for a film that nobody knows about.

So I went along and found a real gem of a film. One of my favourite films of all time is Se7en. It was a new breed of film at the time and nothing since has come close, until now. This has one hell of a sick serial killer, only he is a killer by proxy - or rather his victims are. You see, ultimately this freak puts his victims in situations where there is a way out. But getting out usually involves killing someone else or dying a horrific death.

Anyway, I don't want to review the film or give away too much. I think people should go and see this film to see something really different. While it shares some of Se7en's main theme about ritualistic killings, this film enters new territory of its own. If you are squeamish, you may not want to go and see this film. For me this is a 5 star film.

I will say one thing about the film that gives something away, but I have to talk about it. There are scenes that go down in infamy in cinematic history. I am talking about scenes like the ear cutting in Resevoir Dogs or the alien coming out of the chest in Alien. This for me adds a new one....

Picture this. A sicko tells you that if you do not kill the other person in the room by 6pm, both your wife and daughter will be killed. You are shackled by the leg to a big pipe. You have a bullet, but the gun is in the middle of the room out of reach. The other guy is also shackled. One of the tools the sicko has given you is a hacksaw. You try cutting the chain, but the hacksaw just can't get through stainless steel. But it will go through flesh and bone......

One other thing to talk about is the web-site. Please go and visit www.sawmovie.com and prepare to be amazed by a site that reveals a lot of the sick stuff that goes on in the film. Follow the links in the Flash movie and look for hidden links (move your mouse all over the screen). Best viewed on a broadband connection. The site is really creepy and atmospheric and has to be the best movie promo site ever.

wow! now I can't wait to see it!

forgot to add, very nice review! Thanks!

logic1

Worst film I've seen in years. Walked out after an hour. Rubbish.

.logic.

s8n

saw it last night. Great idea. Wanted to like it but the pacing/dialogue and acting were terrible.
Why is it that we have'nt had a good original horror in years??? The original ring and blair witch spring to mind.

iasc

seen it yesterday, was alright, the beginning seemed like a rip-off of cube
can see the seven comparisons, all the gore and that kind of stuff reminded me of them castle remakes, house on haunted hill, 13 ghosts and ghost ship
wasnt the best...i was laughing half the time at the acting,

Makaveli

Re-reading this thread I noticed that the first few posters thought it was great then almost everyone after that has thought it was crap.
Not much of an inbetween. Don't see how anyone could think it was great either.