Sawful.

Rating: 1/10 (1 November 2004)

God I really wanted this movie to be good. I looked forward to seeing SAW for months thinking that it just might be the catalyst to spring the dying horror genre back on track. What a colossal letdown. First off the filmmakers completely squandered a golden opportunity by peppering their movie with flashy MTV style editing and a ridiculous over the top headache inducing soundtrack. God I hate that! Didn't anyone learn anything from Kubrick's THE SHINING. These two aspects of the film, which every American horror director is apparently addicted to nowadays, time and time again snuffed out any flicker of hope for intensity or genuine malaise. It was like clockwork. Just when you started to feel the slightest bit uneasy... wham, they throw you into the middle of a mosh-pit at a Nine Inch Nails concert and completely ruin the tone. There was absolutely no subtlety in SAW whatsoever. As for the plot. I didn't go into SAW expecting to be blown away by the plot in fact I was hoping to basically see two guys chained to pipes in a bathroom for 90 minutes trying to deal with their unthinkable situation. That premise alone, without all of the terrible flashback scenes and outrageous non-sensical plot devices to aid in the great USUAL SUSPECTS style revelation at the end, could have been infinitely intense and terror inducing. It could have been as gut wrenching as anything in Texas CHAINSAW or FUNNY GAMES, which is what I was so desperately hoping for. Instead what we got was an absolutely unnecessary rehash of a SEVEN storyline that was neither provoking nor engaging. Now to the acting. I don't need much in the way of acting to keep me satisfied in a horror movie, but let me say this: I felt embarrassed for Elwes and Glover. It was the kind of instinctual feeling one gets when a public speaker stutters badly or can't remember their words. You want to help them but you can't. These two guys were dreadful. And it is 100% true that the audience was laughing at them and rightfully so. To put it bluntly, SAW was the biggest letdown I've had at the movies in a long, long time. Last year I looked forward to seeing HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES. As unsatisfying as that movie was at least it stuck to it's guns and didn't try to be something that it wasn't. The filmmakers behind SAW should have stuck to their guns. But Elwes and Glover still might have ruined it then too.