Saw Saw

Damnable damnableness.

So for months, I've been geeked out about the movie Saw that was coming out around Halloween. The previews looked freaky as all get out. So we went to see it on Saturday.

GAH! BAH! AH!

It was not good.

Now, as you can see from the previews, it looks damn scary. But the problem is they did a NICE job constructing the previews. With the movie itself... well, not so much.

Why the movie sucked:

1. Cary Elwes has some of THE worst acting (and makeup too) that I've seen in a ridiculously long time. Like bad bad. Like wanting to have your fingernails ripped off by fleeing cheetahs just so you get distracted from how bad it is bad.

2. It was a lame-ass, poorly constructed rip-off of Se7en. People are getting tortured in malicious and horrible ways that some schemer has come up with depending on their circumstances in life (this is not giving away anything, don't worry). How original, seeing as it was ALREADY DONE AND DONE BETTER!

3. The major plotline boils down to the main character having to kill the other individual in the room with him before 6 o'clock otherwise both he and his family will be killed. There is even a new wall-clock placed in the room so they can keep track of what time it is. AND YET suddenly they look up midway through the movie to realize that it is *GASP* after 6 o'clock. Now answer me this: if you were stuck in a nasty-assed shithole of a bathroom with some other dude and a man dead in a puddle of his own blood in the middle of the room, if you knew that your number was up at 6 o'clock precisely unless you managed to find a way out, if you knew you were gonna DIE DIE DIE DIE and you knew at what time this would happen, WOULDN'T YOU KEEP AN EYE ON THE FUCKING CLOCK? Wouldn't your #1 priority inescapably and NEUROTICALLY be to keep your eye on that clock? Wouldn't it be unavoidable? And yet, these two dinks spend so much time sharing pictures of their families and chatting about past events while chained to pipes that they DON'T EVEN NOTICE WHEN IT GETS NEAR TO THE TIME OF THEIR DEATH.

4. The plotline (and the mystery as it unravels) was SOOOO loosely constructed and flabby as to be laughable at times. Now, this is particularly annoying once you find out that studios were literally tripping over themselves to get their hands on this script. (Unfortunately I cannot track down the link to the article that discusses this, but maybe E can help me out in the comment section.) WHY?!? WHY!!!! I was expecting some shocking and fantastic independent film script that would scare me outta my gourd, but instead I only found again a cheap rip-off of Se7en (with a freaky clownish doll reminiscent of The Game thrown in for good measure). Apparently the aforementioned studios have never actually SEEN another scary movie.

5. Danny Glover's character--serving no point other than to make the comparisons to Se7en even more glaring (black cop consumed by said case). Completely undeveloped character who really had no point other than to anchor the movie with a big-name actor.

6. Only remotely-close-to-redeeming-(and-yet-still-not-good-enough-to-redeem-this-movie) moment was the ending. Far-fetched, yes. But at least creepy and unexpected.

And now I am done. As per usual, I could probably think of a billion and one other things that stunk about it, but I'll spare you.

Carry on.

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