So I finally saw Saw and while it was an effective enough slasher-type film, the more I think about it the more stupid I realize it is. I don’t go into any movie looking for loop holes but some stuff is just too stupid to ignore.
And in many ways it is a smartly made movie, but it’s also completely stupid. And here’s why. Completely spoiled – stop now if you haven’t seen it and ever plan to.
OK, John the actual bad guy and the doctor and Zep are all in the hospital room when the doctor is called away to go talk to the police about the Jigsaw killer’s latest (lucky) victim, Girl With Thing on Head. They even flash to that scene at the end when John is revealed as the real Jigsaw killer. OK, so how is he supposed to be doing these elaborate games while he’s dying of cancer? Even if he’s that badass, he can’t be in two places at once.
That scene also suggests the doctor saves his life. Some gratitude. He saved you from extremely invasive cancer. “Yes, but he called me ‘the patient’ instead of ‘John’. I have a name!’” Wow. Petty.
You know, there really aren’t that many ways to knock people out cold/solid enough to drag them somewhere and put them into an elaborate trap, then have them wake up instantly completely alert enough to understand that they’re in some weird-ass game and able to function well enough to play.
Nor are there all these “slow acting poisons” that kill anyone in a precise amount of time but leave them able to function mentally and physically right up until the final tick.
Adam wakes up in a bath tub, and John is on the floor on a pool of blood with some kind of dead guy suit. Explain how he managed that. Submerged the young man, then in a split second before Adam wakes up towels off, arranges himself in the dead guy suit on the floor…
And seriously, nobody noticed him breathing at all? Not even a little?
Since when do the police say, “OK, suspect with a solid alibi. We want you to stick around and watch this witness testimony.” Is that even legal?
For that matter, why does the Danny Glover character obsess on the doctor as a suspect even though he had an alibi? “Ooh, but we found a PEN at the scene of the crime! Nobody ever makes off with pens from doctors offices. No sir.”
Because it also makes perfect sense to suspect him. Doctors have so much free time to arrange elaborate murder games for strangers for no reason.
John couldn’t really know that Adam would lose the key down the drain right off the bat. Maybe Adam just gets out of the tub, finds the key, let’s himself go, and wanders off to get the police. “The key to that one is in the tub!” is a great last line of the movie, no doubt about it, but it seems like a lot to risk the entire game on.
Just some of the reasons it’s dumb… and I didn’t even mention the character of Zep.
The series does have some holes in the plot, but a number of your questions are answered through the rest of the series. It has an overarching plotline that I was suprised to find was fairly well done considering the genre.
Out of all the people who will watch Saw in their life, you’re probably the last one to actually see it, so the spoiler warning was probably unnecessary… Aren’t they up to about Saw 32 at this point?
Thanks for dropping by adding significant value to this thread. Believe it are not there are all kinds of people on this crazy earth who are (a) capable of critical thinking, and (b) any fun at parties. It’s a false dichotomy. But now I know wrote “u suck” on every single negative comment about this movie on Rotten Tomatoes. And yes, I know, OOH A GUY SAWS HIS FOOT OFF AWSOME!!!11 and I have no comeback for that.
Well, that’s just another plothole right there! How could the producers have known that this piece of torture porn would do well enough to make a whole series possible to accomplish?
It’s not like torture porn is some kind of popul-- hey WAITAMINUTE! I get it now.
I suspected all those things too, but when you’re down with H1N1 and just looking for something to while away the coughing, wheezing hours, you aren’t as discriminating. Frankly since I always watched “Johnny Be Good” and “Fred Claus,” “Saw” is best picture contender for the week.
Nah, it’s not *that *bad. They’re a half-decent scary flick that’s sure to provide a fun twist ending. Is it an academy award winner? No. But it’s no Soul Plane either…
to be clear, I am not complaining because it wasn’t a great movie. I didn’t expect it to be. I was just flabbergasted by the sheer sense-lessness of it. Not many movies are brazen enough to reveal who the killer is, then flash to a scene where he’s shown to be in a hospital bed with cancer at the very time one of the killings was to have taken place.
This happens to be on SyFy right now. I’ve seen pieces of it before, but never all of it. I have to agree with the Dumb.
The scene that first got me thinking, “Okay, reeeeeally?” was the flashback of Danny Glover and the don’t-know-name-cop who was, essentially, a red shirt. The whole scene with the dude in the chair and the running drills I was thinking–guys, shoot the killer. SHOOT HIM. What’s with the “Get the key!” “Where’s the key? Which key?” bullshit? SHOOT HIM then shoot the fucking machine. Really.
And once red shirt gets his red shirt-uppence…um, really, he’s still standing (however long it may have been) after being blasted by how many guns from above? Yeah.
Watching the whole sequence of wifey getting the gun, wrestling with Zep, etc. now. I’m not too impressed with Cary Elwes’s acting. I will say that if I’d been on the set, I would have been bugging him constantly with, “Come on…come on, say it. Come on, once, pleeeease?” “No, man, come on, that was 15 years ago…” “Just once, pleeeease?” “sigh ‘As you wish.’” “HOORAY!”
Although they didn’t show it in Saw I (I think they wait until Saw III to disclose it), but the Shawnee Smith character (total hotness) was an accomplice during this time. So when he couldn’t be there or wasn’t strong enough, she was doing his dirty work.
You clearly have not seen Haute Tension. To paraphrase Roger Ebert, “It not only has a truck-sized plot hole, it drives a truck right through it.”
While I cannot argue with the OP’s points, I appreciated the way Saw was shot. It has a sort of film school vibe to it; maybe more craftsy than artsy. I certainly would recommend it to someone who was into horror or suspense movies (and would not be totally turned off by some gore).
Most of the OP’s examples of “dumb” in the movie are actually only dumb if you’re shortsighted. It wouldn’t be the SDMB without smug agreement of the complaints – which ironically were themselves dumb – by someone who hadn’t even seen the movie.
But hey, I’ll play.
He has an accomplice. Duh. Even though the identity isn’t revealed until part 2 or 3 – which was already planned out during the writing of the first one – you should be able to figure this out. At the end of the movie you get a reveal that the misdirected bad guy was a coerced victim. A de facto accomplice. Throughout the series, he enlists the better part of a dozen such indentured servants. So this objection is dumb.
This completely misses the point. Jigsaw’s primary beef with the doctor isn’t cold treatment, but rather the fact that the doctor isn’t appreciating his life. He’s taking it for granted, which offends John. So this objection is dumb.
3-4. Super-duper knockout agents are de rigeur in movies, similar to how conking someone on the back of the head safely knocks them out. Objections to well established movie conventions like this is why you get responses like “you must be fun at parties.” Not a dumb objection, but a socially retarded one.
5-6. Seriously, we actually see one of John’s accomplices throughout the movie, and yet you so can’t conceive of the fact that he has an accomplice that you’ve made this three different points? Dumb, dumb, dumb. (In one of the sequels they even go back and show us John and his protege preparing that room and that scene. The key going down the bathtub drain is a significant plot point in Saw 3.)
7-9. Meh. These don’t strike me as particularly bad. I’ve seen tv procedurals have suspects watch other witnesses countless times, Hannibal Lechter was a psycho doctor, and I don’t think police are supposed to open fire until the absolute last resort. Not dumb objections, but uber nit-picky, IMO. More of that socially awkward thing, not understanding the concept of suspension of disbelief.
The Saw series was infintely more well thought out than your objections to it. The key wasn’t supposed to go down the drain. They planned out the series well in advance. IIRC from the commentary on Saw, they had written out the first three movies before filming the first one. And I distinctly remember the commentary track for Saw III where they point out teasers in the ending sequence that become plot points in parts 4, 5 and 6. Spoilers regarding your objection about the key:At the end of Saw 2 or the beginning of Saw 3, Shawnee Smith is revealed to be Jigsaw’s protege. Jigsaw realizes that Shawnee is creating unwinnable traps, which is unacceptable. The key going down the drain in one such example; she wasn’t supposed to let that happen. Saw 3 ends up being Shawnee’s test, but we don’t find that out until the very end.
Geez, the had a lot of confidence in themselves, didn’t they? What if #1 had tanked? Then all that setup would have been out the window. Unless they saw it was doing really well, knew there would be sequels, AND THEN went back and figured out the other movies.
