Imagine if Ed Wood re-did Seven and this is what it would look like- the worst film of the year so far

Rating: 1/10 (30 October 2004)

(Possible spoilers)
I was immensely grateful not to have paid to watch this film (snuck in); because if I did I would've felt un-clean once the credits began to roll. The filmmakers, writer/director James Wan and writer/actor Leigh Whannell, have concocted another story in what Hollywood finds as the popular Silence of the Lambs/Se7en vein. The premise sounds like it might have promise- two guys (Whannell and Cary Elwes) are chained up in some abhorrent tub-room, and are given two saws. They have to find a way out, or else Dr. Gordon's (Elwes) wife and daughter will be killed. Then the rest of the story takes off, and it's down-hill. What happens then are a series of flashbacks, tracing how they got in there, how a cop (Danny Glover, a sad state of affairs to see him in this) gets maddened by the cases and an encounter, and how the gory details of the cases emphasize how disturbed and 'scary' the Jigsaw killer is (whom we never really see, except for a clown-type of face that's more of something to laugh at than anything else).
The problem with this film, the chief one among others, is that Wan and Whannell underestimate the audience's intelligence. Everything has to be explained, and with a style in bold, gruesome type that end up not coming off as successfully scary as successfully sadistic (and there is a big difference between something being effective and not- last year's Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake is a prime example). They seem to care more (along with their editor and cinematographer and production designer) to drum up the atmosphere. But they spend so much time going over the top in many cases (and this includes with Wan's direction of actors, which brings out some bad performances, even out of co-writer Whannel) that they don't set up characters we can really sympathize for. In fact, at some point, it becomes so tiresome with how the plot dances around; you almost want them to get it over with it so that the Jigsaw guy can go on to his next abomination. What's worse is that when the third act comes around, all the elements produce material that becomes laughable, and not because we (or at least I was, the audience around me were much the same) are laughing at the sadism of it, but because it's so ridiculous.
Se7evn and Silence of the Lambs spent far more time setting up the good guys, or at least making they seem like strong forces we could identify with, and at the same time the story lines weren't completely unbelievable. At some point while watching Saw, I found it to be like if some hack (i.e. Ed Wood) decided to re-do Se7en except to focus on the victims instead of the cops, to dance around the storyline like they're going farther than Tarantino, and that by the end everyone who deserved to die (except for a few) do. Then I realized, it's like, it is. I don't discourage the 27 year old Wan and Whannell from some kind of potential in Hollywood, but I just don't see it here. D-