Saw (2004)

Saw is the over produced, over budgeted and overly controversial franchise of the 2000's. We have had dumb franchises in the past, Friday The 13th and A Nightmare On Elm Street and I suppose every generation needs a mindless gore film to spawn way to many shitty sequels and that is Saw for the youngsters of today.

For me these Saw movies were never overly appealing. Sure I love sick, twisted, gory, torture films but Saw isn't really any of that. The first movie although witty with interesting plot twists reminded me to much of movies like Seven which I have never been a big fan of. The murders were so elaborate that it took away any bit of realism the movie could have had. Today these movies are known as "Torture Porn" and I don't know which loser coined the phrase but I despise it. In the 70's there were countless sleazy torture films and the level of depravity went way beyond any of these silly Saw movies. Films like Blood Sucking Freaks, Mark Of The Devil and Ilsa She Wolf Of The S.S. so disgustingly brutal with their scenes of torture that they couldn't be seen in most theaters and drive ins. Yet "Torture Porn" and movies like Hostel and Saw is something new? I don't think so... They are just a watered down less offensive example of something that was far more rebellious from our past.

Saw is also remembered for its brutality level in the gore department which is also equally as ridiculous. Almost every murder in the whole movie happens off screen and leaves the gruesomeness to the imagination, which I don't have a problem with per say. Movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Scarface also have the same false reputation but the difference is how realistic and disturbing those films were. Saw shows a bit of gore in the end when a suspected suicide victim crawls to his knees and peals away his face but everything else was left to the mind. We don't see limbs being sawed off and we don't even get to see the bad guys die.

The young director of this thing went on to do other shitty killer puppet movies one of which being Dead Silence and that thing was just awful. So if you like over hyped blockbusters with a bit of blood and very unrealistic murder sequences Saw is probably for you and if you want to dig further back into the past you could check out that other piece of crap Silence Of The Lambs. I'm going to grab my cane and pull Blood Sucking Freaks off the shelf for a truly disgusting time with trashy midgets and torture devices.