Like some perverted creation story, Saw begins in a void, formless and in total darkness, until some unseen voice ordains that there should be light. Sickly fluorescent overheads flicker on, revealing two men chained at opposite ends of a filthy bathroom. In the center of the room is another man, although this one is a corpse lying face down in a pool of his own blood and brains. We have no idea how anyone got there or what any of it means, and neither do the characters in the film. It all smacks of Waiting for Godot dressed down as a splatter flick, a tasty though not entirely original set-up (with origins traceable to a couple of classic Twilight Zone episodes, and modern applications found in films like Cube). There are clues, of course: the clock on the grime-ridden wall appears to be brand new, one of the characters finds a key has been placed in his pocket, while the other character discovers a tape recorder and a cassette labeled "Play me."
The message on the tape completes the picture. An ominous, electronically altered voice informs the captives that one of them must kill the other, and if that action doesn't take place within eight hours then both men will die. That voice (sounding uncannily similar to every movie trailer that begins, "In a world …") concludes with this cryptic zinger: "What do voyeurs see when they look in the mirror?"
The correct answer, I would imagine, is that the voyeur sees nothing at all — just recycled bits and pieces of all the people, places and things absorbed from a lifetime of spying. Unfortunately, that notion of staring into the mirror and finding no one home is also a pretty fair summation of Saw.
It doesn't take long for Saw to show us just how empty it is. The film's tantalizing set-up quickly gives way to scads of clumsy exposition (delivered mostly through intrusive flashback and voice-over), over-obvious editing tricks and miscalculated shock tactics borrowed from other, better movies. Among the movie's most glaring flaws is the acting, which is awful, and a script amounting to a patchwork of clichés that would barely pass muster at 3 a.m. on basic cable or in a first-year film student's project.
There's got to be an all-seeing, all-knowing psycho killer lurking somewhere in Saw, and, sure enough, he's Voyeur Numero Uno — a peep show artist who traps his victims, places them in terrible (albeit terribly photogenic) situations that resemble tableaux vivants, then watches them squirm while they wait for death. Saw's resident psycho is moderately creepy, but he'll be all too familiar to anyone who's ever seen an Italian giallo thriller, not to mention David Fincher's Seven or any of the legions of films it inspired. Saw is similarly indebted to Seven for its cold, dark look, and to the Texas Chainsaw school for its primary setting — a dank, filthy arena of blood, puke and various other nasty bio-stuff.
The movie is barely the sum of its own plundered parts, though, and it undercuts even that modicum of creepiness by constantly cutting away to a series of unnecessary subplots and flashbacks that dissipate the film's energy by shifting the focus from that intriguing two-guys-in-a-room set-up. We keep expecting the movie's dynamics to intensify or at least change somehow, but they don't. Instead, we're diverted by a series of interludes featuring an obsessive detective (Danny Glover), and various family members of one of the characters, but all of this amounts to little more than padding. The characters themselves remain bland and as poorly defined in the end as they were in the beginning.
It's only a horror flick, though, so all of this would be forgivable if only the movie would just shut up occasionally and scare us. Saw doesn't seem too interested in being silent or still, however, and at any given moment is liable to kick into mock-MTV hyper-drive (complete with faux Nine Inch Nails screechtrack), cameras spinning in endless circles like some headless chicken chasing its phantom body part. And whenever there's an opportunity for some nice, shadowy mood-setting, you can bet the film won't miss the opportunity to confront us with yet another jarring close-up of hands sifting through squishy human entrails. This is a movie that fetishizes death and its grisly trophies with all the freakish compulsiveness of a dyed-in-the-wool jihadist — but just because Saw goes out of its way to be unpleasant doesn't make it interesting, nor does it make it particularly frightening.
Saw isn't pretentious, at least — be thankful for small favors — but it often feels stale and stupid, without enough of the endearing qualities that often go hand-in-hand with stupidity. The movie is bound to be someone's guilty pleasure (although even that small satisfaction is going to depend on turning your expectations way down), and I suppose it does try to show us a good time (while calling into question just how we define "good time"), but too much of it is either laughably inept or gratuitously ugly. Then again, there are probably worse ways to get into the Halloween spirit. Scary movies are all about staring at terrible things, after all, and there are certainly lots of terrible things to stare at in Saw — not the least of which is the movie itself.
A Little Bit of China
Eckerd College's International Cinema series is on a roll. Only last week they brought us a restored 35mm print of The Battle of Algiers, and now they're presenting a special two-day mini-festival of acclaimed Chinese films, none of which has ever been seen in the Bay area. The films featured are director Fan Yuan's The Accused (7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 28), Shangri-La Town (7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 29, with director Xiong Yu in attendance), and Li Yalin's The Well (9 p.m. Friday, Oct. 29). All three of these films are complex, beautifully crafted examinations of politics and humanity, and several of the actors and producers from the films are expected to be on hand during the festival to answer questions. This is a one-of-a-kind event, and highly recommended. All screenings will take place at Eckerd College's Dendy McNair Auditorium, 4200 54th Ave. S., St. Petersburg.
lance.goldenberg@weeklyplanet.com or letters@weeklyplanet.com
This article appears in Oct 27 – Nov 1, 2004.