A celluloid abortion

Rating: Null/10 (8 November 2004)

James Wan should be permanently barred from directing after forcing upon the world this fetid turd of a film. Leigh Whannell should be forced to watch his girlish performance of his own hole-ridden, moronic script for eternity. And Cary Elwes should retire from acting in repentance for his dreadful job in this embarrassment to the art form of the motion picture. Seriously, I think Elwes' performance is the worst thing ever captured on film. It's hard to imagine watching him audition these corny, moronic lines in his barely veiled English, or whatever, accent with about as much grace as Casper Van Dien in "Starship Troopers."
With idiotic, MTV-inspired directing, Wan took a potentially interesting premise and completely botched it. The twists are pointless, the dialogue is beyond hackneyed and everything about this film is completely unnecessary -- except, of course, for the closing credits, which let me know that this exercise in unintelligence was finally over. Aside from a few cheap scares and some admittedly clever murder plots from the film's utterly random villain, "Saw" is the film equivalent of wrapping a t-shirt around a hockey stick and hitting yourself in the head for two hours. This crapfest attempts to replicate David Fincher's admirably executed "Seven," but instead comes up at about "One and a half." All jokes aside, though, kill yourself before paying to see this abomination.