An excellent horror film, rooting its grisly gore in a quest for meaning

Rating: 7/10 (10 December 2006)

The killer is dubbed Jigsaw by the media, because of a jigsaw path of skin he etches out of his victims, but also because of the riddle-like nature of the challenges he sets. In reality, this murderer is a terminally ill cancer patient, who has decided that too many people are unworthy of their bodies and their lives. So in this light, his killings are meant to be read as a kind of salvation. Indeed, he goes as far as to personally investigate and select each of his victims, happening to know in precisely what way these people are unfulfilled so as to put them to the test. ... Is Saw not the movie that takes its premise from a fundamental truththat the meaning and cause of living can be nothing but absentand addresses the public's sense of unease and despair by fictionalizing this conflict in the killings of a madman who tackles this unavoidable nihilism and dramatizes it in gruesome killings?
More on: "The Saw Trilogy: Horrifying with Theoretical Truth" at themeasure.blogspot.com