Post Modern Horror Fun

Rating: 7/10 (27 April 2005)

The movie Saw is a "horror" movie, featuring a serial make-other-people-kill-other-people killer. So, technically, he's never killed anybody. Nice.
Anyway, it's a perfectly entertaining whodunnit which posits a villain so clever that he can orchestrate elaborate do-or-die scenarios for his captives to accomplish. I won't spoil it because I recommend it, at least inasmuch as you overlook the plot contrivance that would require the master villain to be a person of immense wealth who also has the ability to Excel spreadsheet all the various possibilities of his plan and account for them, down to the insanely small possibilities.
The basic premise is two guys chained to pipes on opposite ends of a bathroom, one charged with killing the other by six o'clock, the other charged with preventing his own death. Why? so the serial non-killer can show the value of living. Blech. But, still, it's well done, well acted, even though all the while you're saying to yourself nobody could concoct such a Bondian method of killing the protagonist. You have to ignore the realities that would intrude, and you can do this, since the plot tries to be true, but then at the end of the film, when you get the gotcha moment, you realize it could never have really happened.
And not just because the writer/director fooled you with all the misdirection, which I liked because that is good movie making, but because it would have been physically impossible to do. It's good because it's not predictable, even though you're predicting it. It's got all the "if you've seen a horror movie then do this" moments in it that the characters don't do, and at one point I was talking to the TV saying, "Shoot him now. Shoot him now. Don't ask a question. Shoot him. Maybe in the femur, but shoot him." I mean, if you've ever seen, say, 19 horror films, you know that once you get the gun from the bad guy, you don't do anything else other than subdue him. For sure, you don't call someone on your cell phone. Puhleese. He might get the gun back. Shoot him in the leg, at least.
All this was intentional, I'm guessing, which would make this a post-modern horror film since the characters surely recognize they're in a horror film and try to do sensible things, at least for a while. I mean: the film does end with a gotcha.