Suspend you disbelief for two hours and you *might* enjoy it.

Rating: 4/10 (18 November 2006)

I hope, I really *hope* that I'm not overestimating you, as there seem to be thousands of people who are in absolute love with this movie, and didn't need to suspend their disbelief. Why? Because this movie has got unexpected twists, flashback sequences, in all, the basic ingredients to an "intellectual" thriller. But Saw is intellectual only on the very surface, because deep inside, it's a dumb, pretentious and hysterically unrealistic piece of fluff.
Yes, hysterically unrealistic. I'm honestly surprised that many people were ACTUALLY shocked and amazed at the "big" twist at the end, when it was, in fact, downright ridiculous. But well, unrealistic, 90% of the movies out there are too, to some extent. The main problem with Saw is that it was unrealistic AND pretentious. Director James Wan and writer Leigh Whanell were constantly trying to prove to the viewers, at every single instant, that their shallow school project of a thriller was, in fact, an Earth-shattering artistic masterpiece. Not only that, all the flashbacks and revelations were there not to give depth to the story and characters, but merely to shock the viewers. In short, the movie was a heck of a show-off.
The only redeeming factor is that I didn't feel as injured with it as I felt with its sequels, Saw II (which I've watched) and III (on which I don't intend to ever waste money on). And it only gets a 4 instead of a 1 is that, heck, if you're in the right mood, this might be one funny movie. Who knows, maybe in the future it will be valuable MST material. I personally think it already is.