Clichéd Script and Unlikable Characters Sink this Un-scary Film

Rating: Null/10 (13 February 2006)

*1/2 out of ****
Two men, a doctor and a photographer, wake up in the most disgusting bathroom in a dank underground Cavern. They are chained to the wall and have mad the gross discovery of finding a dead body in the room with them. They soon find out that they have been kidnapped and have to play a game in which the doctor must kill the photographer or the kidnapper will kill his wife and child. Soon they begin to collect clues and information about each other, but will they be able to escape, not only with their lives, but with the doctor's family's? The concept of this film is scary. The ideas are somewhat clever. Unfortunitely, those two things are the only things that are able to carry this film. And thankfully, they carry them a long way, but not through to the end, sadly.
This could have been forgivable if we were to care about the characters, but we can't. These kind of films should have more character development, but instead, SAW pushes that aside and layers the film with buckets of blood and guts, neither of which particularly grossed me out since we, again, could care less about the characters, especially the photographer(Leigh Whannell) who goes over the top to make the viewers surprised that the doctor(Cary Elwes) doesn't immediately murder him.
Speaking of which, the normally brilliant Cary Elwes doesn't do well here. He begins too wooden and then tries to be emotional and then gets even more wooden and it just doesn't work. However, I understand that if an actor is British and must switch to doing an American accent, it won't be easy. It wasn't easy for him, and it won't be easy on the audience when he begins doing unrealistic whining noises as he and Leigh are getting chopped to pieces! What wreaks the film the most are the amount of flashbacks that occur nonstop and detract from the plot. The film could have been a good grisly time, despite the flaws, if it just centered on the one room that the two men are tortured in. The flashbacks are annoying and feel like an excuse to just talk about the killer and his sick ways, which eventually accidentally turn themselves into plot devices.
However, the film, despite being really bad, has good points. The plot is intriguing, and the violent torture acts are great fun for gore fans. At one point, a woman forces herself to cut open a man's stomach and find a key to unlock the door in his intestines. And the last fifteen minutes of the film is a create montage of disturbing insanity and depravity that I must recommend to those who like sick stuff. And the twist ending works great and really ends the film with a disgusting BANG!!! The bad out weighs the good this time, but for those looking for a lot of grisly violence will have a good time here. The film manages to just about deliver the gore, but the film has a long way to go to being as good and gory as SEVEN or SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. I hope they get it right next time.
Rated R for strong grisly violence and language