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Wednesday October 17, 2007 - 5:50 PM
- Category:
- Movie
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Director:
- Darren Lynn Bousman
- Year:
- 2006
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Genre:
- Horror
- Average:
-
144 reviews
After the travesty of the second saw movie I was time for the series to redeem itself. Let me state at the beginning of this review that it was the intimacy of the first saw that made it terrifying. In the first one you had to identify with the characters as they were the focal point of the movie. The idiocyncracies of the two chained characters, coupled with the plight of the inncocents, and the obsessing of the dectective made for amazing relationships and a character driven drama.
The second one bastardized the series. The characters became charactures. The only one that made it worth while at all was jigsaw. His reasoning for his traps became an exercise in ethics, rather than horror. However, his vision was preverted by Amanda's subterfuge. This film became nothing more than torture porn. Even the traps were not exciting, except for the pit of needles. The real reason for this movie failing was the one-dimensional characters. There was an angry guy, a angry cop, a scared kid, a sexy girl, a scared girl etc. etc. etc. Awful pointless drivel.
Then came the third movie. This one took character development as its main goal and truly showed a SM relationship between Jigsaw and Amanda. She was his sub, he the dom. The realtionship between the "victims" showed depth as well, as the characters were not merely sketches but fully realized characters, with flaws and points of pride. It became, once again, a piece about the ethics of what they were doing, rather than merely torture-porn. The ethics of the saw movies are realized by whether life is important for the characters or if they are completely dead on the inside. (lame to say it as such, but that is the point of these movies) Living one's life to its fullest is what Jigsaw is striving for, for all his victims. In Amanda's case, he wished for her to understand this notion of self sacrifice, and service. She instead, being a greedy sub, saw nothing but the attention of Jigsaw on other of his "victims". This caused the eloquent character drama that began in the first saw and continued in this installment of the series.
I am looking forward to the fourth installment, and curious to see whether they go back to the atrocious characterless torture-porn of the second movie, or if they continue the character based horror movies that the first and third editions so wonderfully screened.
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