Cheap thrills

Rating: 3/10 (30 January 2006)

It took me while to see it but I finally watched SAW for the first time and I'm not impressed, unlike the seemingly millions of others out there which have turned this tacky movie into a phenomena. The sequel is already a big hit and SAW 3 is probably in the works right now.
It's hard to believe a film like SAW has created so much buzz. The film is mediocre at best and the idea is NOT original at all. Just take a pinch of "Texas ChainSAW Massacre" and combine it with "THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES" and there you go, you have SAW. I'm shocked by how much SAW rips-off its ideas from other film, certainly from the brilliant DR. PHIBES. Taking ideas from other sources is nothing new but most of the time they never work, and here, in this case, personally, they don't work because the film is cheap, cheap, cheap.
The film has zero style; the music, editing, dialogue: crap; the acting is truly horrible; sets look like, well, cheap sets; and the tension or suspense or the gory moments are all facile and cheap. I mean, kidnapping a mother and her daughter and threatening them throughout the film. So F'N' lazy.
SAW has a "surprise ending", which is probably why this film has become such a hit (like SIXTH SENSE and other films with tedious "surprise endings"...) but the ending was hardly a surprise, certainly if you have seen tons other films with actual surprise endings.
The state of horror films today is truly sad if this is considered the best thing around.