I saw SAW

Well, I finally watched the SAW trilogy, the first 2 I viewed back to back on a Saturday night, and then I watched the 3rd one the following night. My impressions? First one is the best, 2nd one is not too interesting, the 3rd one is alright. Haven't seen the 4th one, and I don't know if I'll even bother.

James Wan's concept is a great, but the execution (no pun intended) could have been done so much better. I feel it could have been done to perfection in the hands of someone like Japanese director, Miike Takashi, or Hostel director Eli Roth.

I'll give you a brief outline of the first one. Our nice little fairy tale opens with our killer's current victims, two men chained on opposite ends of a dirty restroom, a body with its' head blown off in the center holding a cassette player and a handgun. Each man is given a tape to play, which provides him with a nice dilemma to ponder during his captivity. The history of the killer and the events leading up to the men's current situation unfolds nicely during narrated recollections and well-placed flashbacks, while the actual motive of out killer remains hidden underneath.

The filming itself is done well, the killing and torture methods pretty good, the gore is done pretty well and not overdone, and it has a pretty good plot. On the other hand, the cast is not so great, the acting not very convincing most of the time, and that doll character that the killer hides his identity behind is not creepy at all, it's just plain fucking silly to me. I laugh whenever I see a scene with that creepy doll and the down-pitched voice of our killer. oooooooooo, scary! Tobin Bell as the serial killer Jigsaw is just not convincing, he's not a great actor, plain and simple.

Saw II brings back many features from the original Saw: elaborate sadistic scenarios designed to "test" the victims' to see how far they will go to live. The set-up this time is a hard-ass cop named Eric who watches his son and a few other victims who are mysteriously connected, on video monitors, trapped in a house filled with deadly nerve gas. Eric has captured Jigsaw, but the implacable killer refuses to reveal where the cop's son is being held... unless Eric will play by Jigsaw's rules. The tortures this time are more gruesome than before. The reason this one's my least favorite is that we get to see and hear too much of Tobin. He has a really annoying voice.

With Saw III, the gore is just caked on as it yet again explores newer and better ways to torture human beings. All the loose ends from Saw II are concluded at beginning of the film, and a detective on the trail falls prey to Jigsaw's trap and ends up the player of one of his fucked up sadistic games, this time the only way of escape is by getting a key sitting in the bottom of a beaker of acid. Then we catch up with Jigsaw himself, as he's waiting to die from his debilitating illness; once again he's tended by helper Shawnee Smith. Some interesting stuff happens in this one, Jigsaw blackmails a doctor into keeping him alive, and tortures a vengeful soul into recognizing the futility of revenge.

These are worth seeing once, but I don't know if they're worth adding to the collection for future views or not. Hostel's a better and more interesting movie (for this genre of horror) than the SAW series in my opinion. But I'm not really into the gore that much anymore, I'd really like to see more shit coming out like Ring and Grudge, the psychological stuff. The gore gets too boring too fast.

Love the package/promotion/poster designs though. Very cool.