Positive Reviewers, Exactly What Movie Did You See? Because It Wasn't Saw.

Rating: 1/10 (17 November 2004)

Shamelessly derivative, sub-music-video level hogwash from start to finish. Even the gore is lame. Perhaps I've been desensitized by one too many serial killer films (and there have been way more than one too many already, Se7en and Silence of the Lambs serving as the most prominent inspirations for Saw's blatant imitation), but the only moment in this whole movie that provided any visceral impact was a beating with a toilet tank lid. And if the best your horror movie has to offer is a big, blunt object, you have categorically failed in your attempt to make a horror movie.
Besides the numerous logical inconsistencies I'm not going to bother to spoil (they'll do that for themselves if you are unlucky enough to find yourself sitting through it), Saw is chock full of wholly unnecessary flashbacks, often to scenes that happened less than 20 minutes before. No new information is revealed through this repetition, no previously innocuous details highlighted and made important, whole scenes are simply repeated, as if the director expects us to have forgotten we just watched them. If only.
The success of this film can only be attributed to external factors: effective marketing, a well-timed Halloween release date, and the continuously diminishing standards and memory spans of the movie-going public. Unsurprisingly, immediately following a tally of the opening weekend receipts, a sequel was greenlit, which begins filming in January. You get what you pay for, people, over and over again.