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Re: HOW FUCKED UP IS THAT? by |bomb 11/02/2004, 1:56pm PST
Spoilers within.

I love horror movies. I was walking downtown a few weeks ago and the poster for Saw - IMDB shows a different one now but the one that I saw that day was a strange shot of a girl with some strange, nasty looking contraption on her head. I was intrigued. The next day at work I googled it and read IMDB as well as some reviews from the screening at this year's Toronto Film Festival. They all compared it to Seven and spoke of the gore and general nastiness. I never saw a trailer or anything else showing actual footage and never read anything negative. I told my wife about it and she was excited to see it too. This weekend we did. I am rarely tempted to go to the theatre to see a movie on opening weekend, especially a horror movie on halloween weekend - Kids ruin movies and I am generally lacking the ability to just "let it slide" when people are chatting through the movie, throwing shit or letting their cell phones go. I put all of that aside this past weekend and went - I wanted to see this movie. I wanted to love the movie. I wanted to have the same reaction to this movie that I did with 'May', which I picked up on a whim at Blockbuster last year and was blown away by the balls the director had to film some of the scenes (blind kids crawling around on broken glass comes to mind).

It was average. It was toothless. I don't know what experience the people who said it was 'gory' have had with regard to horror movies in the past but clearly, my 'gory' scale is not equal to theirs.

Complaints seem to be with the acting, the amount one cares about the characters, and with the implausibility of the killer.

Acting : Honestly, it didn't bug me. I was reading a thread on the Awful Forums about Saw, and this seems to be the major criticism. Though I suspect that after seeing 200 posts on the movie people just try to top what has come before. I totally believe that people came out of the theatre all saying, "What a fucking terrible movie!" as one poster indicated. I believe that they were all doing this whole-heartedly.


I hated Elwes. His "snap" at the end was totally out-of-character to the character he presented throughout the movie up until that point. The Adam character was weak too. The actor was irritating and the dialog was just horrible. All of the 'comic relief' lines that he had were transparently forced and, although they hit home with the majority of the audience (13-17 year olds) they just irritated me.

Depth : I believe you get something "for free" when you put Danny Glover in your movie as a cop. I automatically care about Danny Glover because he's Danny Glover for goodness sake. I think in an alternate dimension he got to be Easy Reader and before you know it he was in Seven and Shawshank and Morgan Freeman made four buddy cop movies with Mel Gibson and I'd be in Morgan's corner instantly. But anyway, if you make Glover your detective, I will care about him as the detective and root for him and hope he wins out.

With that in mind, I didn't feel much empathy for Elwes and felt that the movie didn't expect me to. I am seeing that this is not universal.


Perhaps it's my knowledge that the last Lethal Weapon was made because Glover was in the poorhouse and begged Mel Gibson to make another installment because he couldn't get a job, but I see Glover as a bargain-basement nth-tier "star". I hated him. The script didn't establish that he was highly experienced and knowledgeable. I saw his character as a throw-away one-dimensional character. He was, really, as he didn't add anything to the story or plot. I didn't have any investment in Glover as you apparently did based on him alone and was at the mercy of the script (which was lacking). Therefore I didn't care about the whole cop angle.

The Bad Guy : People going "Shyeah, right" about supervillains in movies are aliens to me. Depicting scenes of madmen constructing life-size rounds of the boardgame "Mouse Trap" is the only legitimate use for cinema.

On the other hand, maybe the fact that this was the first movie I have seen in a couple years where the audience was not a complete distraction had something to do with it. The theatre was pretty empty and nobody was nearby not just taking cell calls, but actively making them. In the past it's been perfectly acceptable for frazzled parents to take their newborns to the 9:55pm showing on Saturday night -- this weekend it was like the Pied Piper had descended upon lovely downtown Longmont, CO right after breakfast and stolen all our wee shriekers away until it was time for Trick or Treating, which was fine with me.

the dark and gritty...Ice Cream Jonsey!


The acting was weak, the script was horrible, but the two next most irritating things to me were the lack of good gore as well as the frantic, irritating and needless MTV-style cinematography at key moments. Your movie is called fucking 'Saw'! Why do you cut away after the first three strokes as Elwes cuts through his ankle? Why?!?! That's the money shot! That's why I bought the fucking ticket! Why do you make the reason I came to see the movie, the killing of the character with that thing on her head from the poster, the ONE VICTIM WHO GOT AWAY! I wanted to see that thing pop and see the effects of her brains popping out. I'm from the Argento school. I want the gore. From the same scene with that girl as well as a few others, too, why do you flip to fast-forward, ratchet up the heavy guitar riff and have me watch the person frantically run around?!? That rips the viewer out of the scene. Oh great, I'm watching a music video.

The director/direction was weak. The movie was weak. Both May and Cabin Fever were much better first efforts than this shit movie. 'Saw' is no Seven. 'Saw' is a B+ film school graduation effort.
PREVIOUS NEXT REPLY QUOTE
 
Saw: loved it NT by Ice Cream Jonsey 10/31/2004, 1:03am PDT NEW
    HOW FUCKED UP IS THAT? NT by Matt Drudge 10/31/2004, 3:31am PST NEW
        Re: HOW FUCKED UP IS THAT? by Ice Cream Jonsey 11/01/2004, 1:17pm PST NEW
            Re: HOW FUCKED UP IS THAT? by |bomb 11/02/2004, 1:56pm PST NEW
                Why do people look forward to horror movies? by Creexul :( 11/02/2004, 3:37pm PST NEW
                    Half Life started out as a horror movie NT by FABIO 11/02/2004, 9:24pm PST NEW
                        No it didn't. NT by Creexul :( 11/03/2004, 7:46am PST NEW
                    Whatever, RECOVERING ANIME FAN. NT by Fussbett 11/03/2004, 9:25am PST NEW
                I think this is a good review. NT by Fullofkittens 11/02/2004, 6:01pm PST NEW
                Re: HOW FUCKED UP IS THAT? by FABIO 11/02/2004, 9:32pm PST NEW
                    Re: HOW FUCKED UP IS THAT? by |bomb 11/03/2004, 8:57am PST NEW
                        Re: HOW FUCKED UP IS THAT? by Eyo 11/03/2004, 9:36am PST NEW
                        Re: HOW FUCKED UP IS THAT? by Fullofkittens 11/03/2004, 6:19pm PST NEW
                            Re: HOW FUCKED UP IS THAT? by |bomb 11/04/2004, 9:18am PST NEW
                    Japanorpging making you crabby? by Lizard_King 11/03/2004, 1:37pm PST NEW
                        Thanks, LK! by FABIO 11/03/2004, 3:09pm PST NEW
                            Re: Thanks, LK! by Lizard_King 11/03/2004, 4:59pm PST NEW
 
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