If It’s Halloween It Must Be Saw, No Matter How Much We Wish It Were Something Else

Share on Facebook posted 10-07-09 by Angelo D'Argenio

I’ll admit, I’ve been dancing around this subject for a while because its not pleasant. It’s a combination of the horror genre’s best practices and worst trends. It swears that it has a message and meta-plot even though neither has become apparent at this point. It’s made you afraid of the most mundane things even while reacting to them with a gigantic WTF, and long story short it’s something we all know and have become familiar with. Everyone, let’s talk about Saw VI.

Saw

A new Saw VI trailer has just graced the face of the internet, and I am here to ask: Why? You see, Saw has come a long way since its meager start as an obscure horror movie concept, but many people think that trip has been entirely downhill. The first saw scared you not with some invincible serial murderer or movie monster, but with a guy with a sadistic brain and bottle of chloroform, and get this he was a cancer patient! It made you generally care about its two main characters, even though both of them turned out to be rather impressive scumbags. The mysterious Jigsaw Killer knew how to get under your skin, and managed to revolt even the most rock solid of horror fans by putting normal people in impossible to escape situations. Long story short, it was edgy. Saw didn’t scare you by making you fear for your life, it scared you by asking “what would you do in this situation” and the answer was never very pretty.

Saw II

Like all good horror movie franchises, Saw had a sequel that diluted the concept a bit. Instead of two main characters that you seriously felt compassion toward, you were given a group of main characters that weren’t even related to each other all that closely. Deep and involving psychological puzzles turned from being handcuffed to a tub, dared to saw your own leg off, to being dared to swim in a pool of hypodermic needles, when you could have just sorted through them. The whole movie was a little campy, but the twist at the end brought the Saw series full circle, and most people were pleased. Jigsaw was dead, but he had a successor that would take his place! A fitting end to a most devilish antagonist …

Saw III

… or was it!?! Like all good horror movie franchises, Saw was actually a trilogy. The Jigsaw Killer was not in fact dead, he was just edging closer to death by the second. Jigsaw’s successor, Amanda, is the primary focus of this movie, as it explains how she had been working with him since the beginning (even though in the first movie it said she survived him and in the second movie it said she teamed up with him out of empathy). Saw III scales back the amount of participants, once again attempting to make you care about the main characters again, and you do, but this time around its Amanda who screws up majorly and let’s her emotions get the better of her, which makes sense considering that the whole Saw series up until this point was actually a trap for Amanda … which frankly … is bullshit! The end of this movie was basically a gigantic retcon and it had fans up in arms, but thankfully the whole thing seemed to be over as Amanda was dead, most of the main characters were dead, and Jigsaw himself had his throat slit (even though the whole movie was about keeping him alive). The Jigsaw killer was finally put to rest, even though everyone around him was dead. His terror was finally over and fans could go home happy knowing that the trilogy had at least a semi decent ending.

Saw IV

Except like all good horror movie franchises, Saw needed to be beaten into our heads until we couldn’t take anymore, and this is where Saw IV comes in. Saw IV like Saw II involved a large cast of characters that you don’t really care about. Most of the characters are new, and the plot line loops upon itself several times. It turns out that even though Jigsaw is dead, he is still killing people through the use of yet another apprentice that simply wasn’t mentioned in the previous films. Quick and dirty, this apprentice forms a gigantic scheme to kill … pretty much everyone in the police department for no good reason out of some dying wish that Jigsaw had. In the end, the solution to the puzzle was “do nothing” prompting another “what the fuck” from audiences everywhere. The movie started with the autopsy of Jigsaw which revealed a cassette tape embedded in his body. The cassette tape was for Lieutenant Mark Hoffman who was later revealed to be Jigsaw’s apprentice, and it said that he would be tested as the “last man standing”. The big reveal of the movie was that this opening scene was actually the end of the movie which meant … oh lord … there was going to be another one.

Saw V

Like all good horror movie franchises, Saw eventually went on long enough to make me cut myself while crying in the corner of my room and listening to Dashboard Confessional. Saw V was bad … baaaaaaaaad. This time the movie had both a small amount of main character, and a large amount of main characters. The two parallel plots involved Liutennant Hoffman and Agent Strahm playing a game of cat and mouse through Jigsaw’s cleverly devised traps, and 5 random people connected by an arson. The arson group is, in a word, stupid. They are able to survive most of Jigsaw’s tests through moderate levels of pain, but instead they resort to killing each other, because they are just retarded. The Hoffman and Strahm plots seem kind of cheap, as every solution to every life threatening puzzle that Strahm is put in is “don’t do anything” which was obviously just an attempt to keep the Jigsaw killer from being unveiled. It felt like Jigsaw had started to miss his own point, especially since the very first trap in the whole movie was unwinnable, and that runs totally counter to Jigsaw’s entire modus operandi. What’s even worse is that most fans believe that the autopsy of Jigsaw’s body also took place after Saw V, which meant Hoffman was still not tested, and there had to eventually be …

Saw VI

Saw VI. This brings us up to present day, and like all good horror movie franchises … fuck off! Saw VI revolves around Hoffman’s relationship with a mysterious boy named Garret who was “not tested by Jigsaw.” Even though he was “not tested by Jigsaw” he was put into a life or death situation, which sucked. Hoffman thinks Garret knows his secret, and decides to throw him into a Jigsaw like game, except apparently “Garett’s role in the games may have an unexpected turn of events in the Saw franchise…” In short, Garret is some sort of magical plot mcguffin that will ruin Hoffman and will probably reveal another successor to Jigsaw. Oh and six people will probably die this time around because writers love to do number puns in this series.

I’m skeptical, I think that is obvious, but I don’t want to be. I truly enjoyed the first Saw, and I never really thought that sequels were all that bad an idea. The type of fear that the Saw franchise instilled in me was a delightful mix of paranoia and gory revulsion and somewhere deep inside I liked that. The problem is Saw seems to have strayed further and further from the point as sequels go on. Saw VI has promised us that it will return to the Saw formula of old, but considering that there are already plans for a Saw VII on the table, I’m not so sure I believe that. Maybe take a year off ya know? There has been a new Saw movie every Halloween since it first came out. Maybe a year to think of a good plot will do you good.

Still, there is no denying that Saw VI is drumming up a huge fan buzz and is probably the horror movie to look out for this October. It opens on Halloween night, so set the date, and get ready to scream AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH SAW!