Huge disappointment

Rating: 2/10 (2 November 2005)

I gave Saw 2/10, and those 2 stars were for the one good thing about the movie: the premise. The idea behind the movie is a great one; the idea of a killer who's deranged "games" teach his victims something about how they are living their life. Also, when his next two victims wake up in a room together, chained to opposite sides, they must follow his clues in order to escape. This intriguing and dreadful (in a good way) premise is a great start for a horror movie. So what went so wrong? The first thing that went was the plausibility. When the two main characters wake up chained up and all the worse for wear in a strange room, remembering nothing of how they got there, do they freak out in any way? Nope. Instead, they react surprisingly calmly and with even some dumb jokey lines. Which leads to the next failure of the movie: the writing, and most importantly, the acting.
The 2 characters chained in the room (one is played by Cary Elwes, the other I've never heard of) put on such a spectacular show of terrible acting that it almost seems like a joke. The idea that they're actually trying to act in a serious movie, let alone this horror movie impressed by its own seriousness, is laughable.
The final mistake in this movie is one that horror movies so often slip into: a degeneration into an unexciting action-sequence ending. A confusing chase scene near the end is unnecessary and uninteresting, and it's too bad it wasn't replaced with something more unique.
Despite its fatal flaws, it has a few memorable moments. A couple of the situations the killer puts his victims into (the snapping helmet, for instance) are bizarre and twisted. Also, the ending does have a decent twist. However, with so much wrong with this movie, these few good points don't do much to salvage the wreckage.