The 'final twist' is NOT the last.

Rating: 10/10 (27 November 2005)

*** SPOILER AHEAD, a big one. Don't read if you want to see this movie, as it will kill almost ALL the plot at once. Watch the movie, then come back to read this. :)
OK, everyone's looking for reason in this, it's the way thrillers work. There is one that over-rules the rest. There is no killing, not even a set-up. It's all in one guy's mind. We are even told whose mind that is. He lies there, still alive in the midst of the rotted pipework of his own brain as it decays while he is still trying to use it. We've seen the proof, his x-ray is shown by Dr. Gordon to be a mess of terminal cancer, the entire frontal lobe is consumed, pretty much. We are led to think he gets out of hospital and later becomes fit and mentally coherent enough to outwit and out-struggle all those who interfere with his plans. Nonsense! That man would never have left a bed! He is dying, and probably has days or weeks at most remaining to him. What we are seeing is his deranged and resentful visions as he puts together the pieces of the lives of those around him while the basis of his own life is falling apart. He probably learns of Dr. Gordon's wife and child through words heard during phone calls made in his presence, and fantasises, voluntarily or otherwise, ways in which they become part of various scenes acting out his increasingly extreme revenge on all those who still have their lives intact. He's falling to pieces, he was an inventive, intelligent man who liked complex models and puzzles, and all he can do with that skill now is dream his revenge on life in fragments of increasingly desperate images. They don't even have to make that much sense, the thing that really cuts deep is the realisation that maybe the enforced derangement of a brain being eaten away can do that to someone, so that they finally die, and the end of the game is nothing but one tormented piece of his own mind witnessing the departure of another. That is a truly terrible and subtle plot, and spelling it out at the end would be pointless, given that the clues were laid clearly throughout the movie. Actually, by revealing the guy in the midst of his own terrible creation, his modelling of events, they pretty much did spell it out. Once you remember that even that derelict toilet was modelled in advance, as shown in the earlier scenes, I'd say the plot was laid on with a trowel. >:) Which makes it very strange that I haven't seen anyone else see what I have seen in it.
To those who said it wasn't scary, I say it was. I've seen Cannibal Holocaust, Ichi The Killer, Battle Royale, and several other notably shocking movies, and Saw was more genuinely harrowing than most. I didn't figure it out till after the end, and had to watch bits again to confirm the clues were really there as I suspected. They were. But what I'll remember is the feeling that went with it, the way rationality gives way to fragmentation, and the terror that comes with that. Most horror movies are a harmless escape. This isn't. And trying to find ways to avoid its core won't get you off the hook.
So many naysayers, and so many stupid reasons for disappointment! One says the plot was full of needless exposition, another said it totally lacked explanations. Yet another complained about the nonlinear plot, saying that recounting the earlier captures lacked suspense because the characters had already been shown to be 'fine'. I wonder if he'd feel 'fine' chained to the rusty pipes of a forgotten toilet under some derelict building. I think these people lost the plot, and believe me, it's not a plot for the meat-brained to get. Even those who rated this movie highly seem to have missed the final turn. Maybe I'm imagining this, but as I see it, it makes a terrible, inevitable sense of the entire movie, and might explain why it was so unsettling that it left the naysayers desperately grasping for reasons why it anguished them to write here instead of being as truly indifferent as many of them claim.
I'm giving this the full ten, a plot like that would not have embarrassed a mature Alfred Hitchcock, so as this is the first movie from a new director, it deserves the full score. I know there were points where logic seemed to slip, points where any of us can see better plans of action, but a movie isn't a series of little exercises, it's a vision. It's only those who miss that who get caught up in the small rationalisations rather than the big ones. I ought to know, I was a terrible person to watch a movie with as a kid, I'd ask everyone around me to help me understand every little thing, and I am thankful I have lived enough to see more than I would if they could have told me. The only thing that would surprise me about that movie now is if the director said that they never intended any of what I saw in it. Which is doubtful considering the number of clues they laid for us all to see.