Saw (2004)
Directed by James Wan
Two men wake up to find themselves shackled in a grimy, abandoned bathroom. As they struggle to comprehend their predicament, they discover a disturbing tape left behind by the sadistic mastermind known as Jigsaw. With a chilling voice and cryptic instructions, Jigsaw informs them that they must partake in a gruesome game in order to secure their freedom.
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38 films that influenced Saw
What critics say influenced Saw
It is perhaps inevitable that this unsettling debut from director James Wan will be compared with Se7en.
While the concept is not very original (overall it smacks of a low-rent Se7en), the film could serve as a model for ambitious young filmmakers with limited financial resources.
Indebted to Se7en for its overly intricate murder scenes, as well as to Requiem for a Dream's relentless music-video pacing, Saw doesn't announce first-time director James Wan as a new auteur, but as a media-saturated copycat.
First-time director James Wan is clearly playing by a rule first set down by David Fincher in Se7en ? that everything must be old, bloody, filthy and decrepit.
Tyro director James Wan, who also concocted this story with screenwriter/star Whannell, is obviously a huge David Fincher fan as "Saw" ransacks both "Se7en" and "The Game" albeit in bargain basement fashion.
The set-up and premise are undeniably clever, but this marks the second time in the past few months that a filmmaker has been spectacularly unsuccessful in trying to mimic the style of 1995's "Se7en."
Even setting aside the obvious influence of Fincher's big-hit thriller Seven -- which also featured a sicko mastermind passing harsh judgment on his hapless prey -- Saw carries echoes of Fincher's subsequent movies Fight Club, in which Brad Pitt held a gun on a cringing convenience-store clerk and told him he'd better start working towards his true calling as a veterinarian or else Pitt would find him and kill him, and especially The Game, wherein Michael Douglas suffered an endless night of torments intended, it turns out, to shock him into a fuller awareness of life.
Tyro director James Wan, who also concocted this story with screenwriter/star Whannell, is obviously a huge David Fincher fan as "Saw" ransacks both "Se7en" and "The Game" albeit in bargain basement fashion.
So it is with great pleasure that I introduce you to James Wan, whose first film, “Saw,” is the work of a man who I daresay has seen “Seven,” “The Game” and “Panic Room” a few times and who has learned from them.
In this respect, it brings to mind such thrillers as Tony Scott's The Fan (1996) and William Friedkin's Cruising (1980), which were both very good, but hurt by impluasible endings.
Images used frequently by Argento populate the film (the black gloves shown throughout scream "Deep Red").
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Two other recent films started this way, Cube (1998) and Dark City (1998), and both have become cult classics.
If this were The Player, I would pitch the story as Seven meets Cube meets Phone Booth.
Like the characters in Cube -- an obvious influence on Saw -- their lives were somehow connected, before this horrific turn of events.
Still working within the serial killer model, Wan and Whannell graft "Saw" to the ticking-clock morality play of "Phone Booth" (as well as the "escape this room" mini-genre of the "Cube" movies and numerous disaster films).
If I told you this one was "Seven" meets "Cube" by way of a Nine Inch Nails video (with a sprinkling of "The Silence of the Lambs" thrown in for flavor), you'd probably dismiss the movie as something less than unique or original, let alone brain-crackingly cool.
Before I saw the film, someone described it to me as Se7en meets Cube .
Advance word had it that Wan’s film out-sawed Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in terms of sheer visceral suspense, not to mention the extremely high gore quotient (one character has to dig through the entrails of a still-breathing victim to save her own life, which, you have to admit, is no picnic).
And I mean that as the most sincerest compliment since SAW is so full of everything from puzzle-piecing to wincing to shocks to inner meanings to one of the most nerve-rattling climaxes since Seven, that their second collaboration would be akin to the expectations of James Cameron following up Titanic.
(Danny Glover played one himself, in the underseen, effectively creepy Switchback [1997].)
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Three Halloween horrors: Saw, Enduring Love, and Eyes Without a Face.
Final Destination has both of those angles covered: the headliners include Dawson's Creek regular Kerr Smith and two-shot guest star Ali Larter (in fairness, Larter's fame - such as it was - largely started with Final Destination, and she could fairly be called an unknown), American Pie stand-out Seann William Scott, and in the lead role, Devon Sawa.