We Came, We Saw, We Want It To Go Away

By Pearce Holland

Another Halloween approacheth, and with it, for some inexplicable reason, another Saw movie is poised for release. Many people think the Saw movies are terrible. Others see them as torture porn. I love horror movies and agonized over what to focus on for this particular season of fright, and with the downswing of torture porn’s popularity as a horror subgenre, I think the Saw movies (I through V) are a pretty appropriate choice.

Personally, I think Jigsaw is a particularly frightening villain and had to sleep with the lights on for a couple of weeks after watching the first movie (despite a smartass in the back of the theater yelling “As you wish!” during the doctor’s particularly emotional scenes). When you find yourself jumping away from closet doors in fear of hooded people in pig masks, you know a movie has gotten to you on a very deep level. Saw could have easily stood alone.

Even I’m sick of me.

Well, naturally Hollywood couldn’t stop there. Saw II was certainly toeing the torture porn line, playing on a number of things that make people squeamish. (Needles! Ew ew ew!) However, it also provided some insight into Jigsaw’s character, and once I’d watched the third movie, I saw the second in an entirely different light; Saw III pulled together the pieces of Saw II and made them into more than a follow-up film simply exploiting the squeamish fright factor. The last-minute “WTF” endings of the first and third movies were particularly entertaining to me, as I can usually predict the way a film is going to end within the first five minutes (as I did with Saw II, High Tension, The Reaping, 1408, and so forth). I found myself a bit on the edge of my seat, waiting to see what monkey wrench would be shown to have been part of the mix from the very beginning. Again, I thought the trilogy could have stood by itself.

Certainly, there were many unanswered questions, but that was part of what made the movies so interesting to me; it was not what was presented on the screen but instead what was absent from it. Jigsaw has a certain logic, a method to his madness. He’s a bit like a far more hands-off, slightly more compassionate Hannibal Lecter; after all, he does give his victims the opportunity to redeem themselves through creepy, stomach-turning acts. I was also reminded a bit of Emperor Palpatine molding his young apprentice into a surrogate child, a way to pass on a bit of oneself without biological offspring.

Giving the
middle finger salute.

I find it intriguing to analyze a particularly nasty villain’s set of internal rules, morals, ethics, or whatever you’d like to call them. Hannibal Lecter has a personal moral code, as does Jigsaw. In my mind, even The Dark Knight‘s Joker has a method to his madness. As a result, I wasn’t terribly offended when Saw IV and Saw V were presented to us, as they expounded upon Jigsaw’s character even further. Were they necessary? Not at all. However, I wasn’t about to turn down the opportunity to pick up more information. I’m as much of a people-watcher when it comes to the silver screen as I am in real life, and at the end of Saw V, I felt the series had definitively concluded. In my mind, there was no way to continue the movies from there. A surrogate Jigsaw simply wouldn’t hold the same level of interest for me, and I wanted the story arc left the way it was, questions and all.

You can imagine my shock at the decision to release a sixth film. This film will be the only one of the series of which I want absolutely no part. They cast one of the characters from a freaking reality show. In fact, I’m a bit personally annoyed at the release of Saw VI, since it undermines my attempts to convince others that there is much more to the Saw story than torture, blood, and guts. The Saw arc is about facing mortality, the value of one’s own life, and the possibility of redemption. It’s about a man who is, in a way, a moral vigilante. Jigsaw manages to be a frightening villain even on his deathbed simply through sheer intellect. And now he is dead. He has met with his own mortality. Sure, he has disciples, but do I care about the able-bodied, healthy wannabes who can’t quite match his genius? No. No, I do not. And why should I?