Good but not completely satisfying

Rating: 7/10 (2 February 2005)

James Wans "Saw" is best described as a psycho thriller with some elements of horror movies. The name suggests a hack-and-slash "ten-teenies-and-a-killer-in-a-house-movie" but it absolutely isn't. Althougth it isn't a great movie, it still has it good and bad sides. Let's take a closer look.
The movie begins good when Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) and Adam (Leigh Whannell) find themselves in a room, chained by one foot. In the middle of them is a dead body, with a gun and a little tape recorder next to it. Both find a tape in their trousers pocket. When they play it, a creepy voice sets Dr. Gordon for a choice. If he doesn't kill Adam within eight hours, his woman and little daughter will be killed.
Then Dr. Gordon recognises the situation. The moment when they discover they are victims of a serial killer who likes to do sadistic psycho logic experiments told by flashbacks of the victims is thrilling and reminds me strongly of Vincenzo Natali's "Cube". The main theme of this experiments is, how far would you go to save your own life? The way the victims react in the different situation is very realistic because it represents pure fear and so humanity. Moreover did the custom designer a awesome job by making the bad guys mask. It can be described as defying, sadistic and evil, which perfectly suits the content of his experiments.
But then, there are a view scenes which don't add anything to the whole story and contains crappy acting. The middle of the film feels like they rushed through it and never shot a single scene twice. This is a sin, because the starting of the movie promised much and I was expecting the same fear-factor in the next three quarters.
The ending compensates this a bit. There are a few scenes which are very realistic. The faces of terror and the disturbing footage gives us a good impression of mens will to survive or their will to protect their loved ones. However, the last scene isn't satisfying and logic at all. It gives you the feeling that the script writer hadn't enough time to finish it properly.
This movie isn't bad, but it deserved more then 18 days of filming and such a low budget. When they had chosen to use an ending with a little bit more logic and if they had discovered the benefit of crossing out some scenes in the middle of the movie during the cutting process, this movie could be one of the best in it's genre.