Hello, all, and welcome back to my retrospective of the Saw franchise. On this fourth day of Sawdom, things begin to change quite a bit, and by that I mean it takes what it had in the previous installment and pretty much runs with it.
Is this a good thing or not? Well...
First, the disclaimer:
There will be spoilers for extremely plot-sensitive details from the previous Saw movies. If you have not seen the first two installments of the franchise, turn back now and watch them before reading the review. You can't say I didn't warn you when your franchise is spoiled.
With this, I'll bring the topic to today's movie...
Saw IV
People keep dying around Police Lieutenant Rigg (Lyriq Bent), so Jigsaw puts him to a test. He now has to learn to think like Jigsaw in order to save police detectives Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) and Mark Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) while encountering various other people that are in need of salvation as Jigsaw sees it, while we learn the past of the now-deceased Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), and what drove him into his time as a serial killer...
...And that's where it starts to fall apart.
This latest movie in the franchise is as slick and gory as the previous installments were. It's all tough to watch, it's all really well-done, and it's all competent. But, the problem is that it's more or less taken the torture porn idea and run with it as far as it can.
And now, it's not scary so much as it is a little tough to watch. The gore stops being scary when it's the only thing that's focused on. Yes, there's Rigg's trap, but now it seems the focus has shifted from the human suffering in the equation to how badly can people get fucked up by stuff. And this really ramps down the atmospheric building that occurred throughout the last three installments. And it's no longer truly horror as a result. It doesn't help that we don't really care enough about half the people that get messed up. It's part of the movie's point, but when the going really gets bad, it gets tough to sympathize with the people we're supposed to.
What also changes is that the characters don't get developed too thoroughly throughout this installment. It takes away a smaller piece of the tension, as we don't really get any reasons why we should care for them other than 'they're in these traps, and they must be helped'. Nothing more, though nothing less either. It makes for a very mixed package, to be sure.
It doesn't help that this movie tries to cram a little too much into its running time. I felt the whole subplot detailing Jigsaw's history was a little pointless, seeing as how it didn't really add that much to the movie. (Also, there was that prequel comic that sadly got retconned straight to hell by this installment...) The amount of information this movie had was also distracting from the main test that was being gone through in the game.
So overall? Saw IV represents a big step down for the franchise: its concentration shifts from the people suffering through Jigsaw's traps and trials to what actually happens to people in the traps. It's not pretty, and it distracts from the tension greatly as well, meaning that the tightness the previous movies once had is instead replaced by a strange feeling of disgust. And that is not the kind of tension that makes a good horror movie.
1.5/4
This movie was very disappointing.
Right. Now, for thoughts on the franchise?
Well... Saw IV is the first truly bad Saw movie in my eyes. The first three were actually pretty good, so I was pretty shocked that it took this long for the franchise to truly get to the place where it's all about the torture porn. And this is the point where it gets pretty bad. Odd how it'll ultimately be smack dab in the middle of the franchise when it got bad. I'm almost tempted to take the first three films and hold them in a vault, proclaiming the first three movies to not exist.
This... brings me to another point that I'm beginning to notice; the amount of traps in these movies is beginning to get on borderline ludicrous. At the end of the movie, it's revealed that the events of both the third and fourth installments are taking place at the same time. That... would require a lot of planning, and if so, John Kramer probably should've gone into a different profession since that would take a ridiculous amount of brainpower to engineer something this big. But it's beginning to get ludicrous, and I fear that the rest of the franchise will only get more and more convoluted in this regard in terms of plot and how many traps Jigsaw can operate at once.
And as for the gore, I think I know where the franchise might be heading in terms of this by this point. Each installment has only gotten gorier, and I have a feeling the remaining installments won't be much different in this regard.
But we'll see. After all, we do have three days left, and now that we're at the midway point of the franchise, anything can happen. But we'll see what happens.
This is Herr Wozzeck Reviews, at the sunset of the Fourth Day of Sawdom. I'll see you guys next time, and I hope you'll join me on the Fifth Day of Sawdom when I review Saw V.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Herr Wozzeck Muses: And So Sayeth The Lord...
Warning: This musing will contain spoilers for My Soul To Take and The Book of Eli. If you haven't seen either, turn back now, and you won't be able to say I spoiled your movie-going experience. If you have, read on.
My Soul To Take being supernatural horror is a bit of a no-brainer for those who know Wes Craven's work well; after all, he is perhaps most famous for A Nightmare on Elm Street. If he works well within dream horror, there's something to be said about how you might be able to transplant that into straight supernatural horror. So on that count, you'd think it would succeed.
But one thing you might not have known about My Soul To Take is that its supernatural elements take a more... shall we say... spiritual angle as the film reaches its close. You can see the beginnings of the spiritual elements of its story by virtue of its title, derived from a prayer that plays a pretty big role throughout the entire film in a way that isn't immediately obvious. Perhaps another indicator is that one of the main characters (and one of the Ripper's victims) is a hyper-religious Bible nut who studies about it and either prays to God all the time or throws a 'you're going to hell' line at the wrongdoers (thankfully, she throws them at the mandatory asshole victim and not the guys who don't deserve it, so she's cool). She even quotes Psalm 23 prominently at one point as she's walking in the woods.
But what you don't get instantly is the hints that angels and demons are at play here. Yes, we get Bug getting visions of the other victims by looking in mirrors, and he seems to be not entirely himself, but it's not until the final minutes of the film that we get any indication of what's going on (although a few genre savvy viewers will most likely figure it out well before then). It's also not until the end of the film that we realize the Ripper was posessed by a demon intending to start a whole cycle of sacrifices with one of the Seven.
And up until that point? The Ripper felt very grounded in the real world. In fact, the denoument felt like it was ripped straight out of an Agatha Christie novel. It all could've had some grounding in the real world, as the posession tended to manifest more like Dissosciative Identity Disorder than what we'd find in The Exorcist.
If nothing else, this to me makes it feel like My Soul To Take might serve as a go-to example for how to make movies with spiritual elements that have enough grounding in the real world to make both elements work fairly well. Yes, the Ripper is a little supernatural, but there's nothing he does that can't be done in the real world. Yes, there's demonic posession, but it's not quite your typical posessions. The blend of the two works really well.
Thinking about this brings back The Book of Eli, which I slammed for having one of the dumbest twist endings in the movies, and is currently my lowest-rated movie that I've ever reviewed since I started reviewing movies. I think one of the principal problems that movie had was it tried too hard to involve the spiritual elements. It all felt very grounded in the real world, right up until it revealed he was blind. After that, the fridge logic came rushing in, even as I was watching.
Yes, I get he was supposed to be divinely inspired. The advertising campaign made no attempt to disguise that. But they did it in a way that invalidated the rest of the movie as a result; Eli could've given Carnegie the book at any time after Mila Kunis' character joined him and it wouldn't have affected the ending all that much. As well, even if Carnegie's girlfriend had been free from threatening, a Braille Bible apparently takes more than one volume to write. (By the way, I didn't mind the fact that he had memorized the entire King James Bible so bad; you'd be incredibly surprised at what a man's memory is capable of storing.) As well, the whole twist smelled of 'God exists in this universe, people': even if his other senses were heightened, there's no way Eli should've been kicking that much ass as a blind man. It pushed the willing suspension of disbelief too far for something with its hyper-realistic post-apocalypse treatment.
This is something that My Soul to Take manages to avoid. Yes, the elements are there and fairly obvious once we get to the end, but they don't invalidate the movie entirely. I think this is more than just the fact that it's supernatural horror versus Fallout 3 with Bibles; I think it's also on the virtue that it balances its real world and spiritual elements perfectly. Is that a good thing? I'll let you decide. But I like to think it is.
This is Herr Wozzeck Reviews. I'll see you guys next time.
My Soul To Take being supernatural horror is a bit of a no-brainer for those who know Wes Craven's work well; after all, he is perhaps most famous for A Nightmare on Elm Street. If he works well within dream horror, there's something to be said about how you might be able to transplant that into straight supernatural horror. So on that count, you'd think it would succeed.
But one thing you might not have known about My Soul To Take is that its supernatural elements take a more... shall we say... spiritual angle as the film reaches its close. You can see the beginnings of the spiritual elements of its story by virtue of its title, derived from a prayer that plays a pretty big role throughout the entire film in a way that isn't immediately obvious. Perhaps another indicator is that one of the main characters (and one of the Ripper's victims) is a hyper-religious Bible nut who studies about it and either prays to God all the time or throws a 'you're going to hell' line at the wrongdoers (thankfully, she throws them at the mandatory asshole victim and not the guys who don't deserve it, so she's cool). She even quotes Psalm 23 prominently at one point as she's walking in the woods.
But what you don't get instantly is the hints that angels and demons are at play here. Yes, we get Bug getting visions of the other victims by looking in mirrors, and he seems to be not entirely himself, but it's not until the final minutes of the film that we get any indication of what's going on (although a few genre savvy viewers will most likely figure it out well before then). It's also not until the end of the film that we realize the Ripper was posessed by a demon intending to start a whole cycle of sacrifices with one of the Seven.
And up until that point? The Ripper felt very grounded in the real world. In fact, the denoument felt like it was ripped straight out of an Agatha Christie novel. It all could've had some grounding in the real world, as the posession tended to manifest more like Dissosciative Identity Disorder than what we'd find in The Exorcist.
If nothing else, this to me makes it feel like My Soul To Take might serve as a go-to example for how to make movies with spiritual elements that have enough grounding in the real world to make both elements work fairly well. Yes, the Ripper is a little supernatural, but there's nothing he does that can't be done in the real world. Yes, there's demonic posession, but it's not quite your typical posessions. The blend of the two works really well.
Thinking about this brings back The Book of Eli, which I slammed for having one of the dumbest twist endings in the movies, and is currently my lowest-rated movie that I've ever reviewed since I started reviewing movies. I think one of the principal problems that movie had was it tried too hard to involve the spiritual elements. It all felt very grounded in the real world, right up until it revealed he was blind. After that, the fridge logic came rushing in, even as I was watching.
Yes, I get he was supposed to be divinely inspired. The advertising campaign made no attempt to disguise that. But they did it in a way that invalidated the rest of the movie as a result; Eli could've given Carnegie the book at any time after Mila Kunis' character joined him and it wouldn't have affected the ending all that much. As well, even if Carnegie's girlfriend had been free from threatening, a Braille Bible apparently takes more than one volume to write. (By the way, I didn't mind the fact that he had memorized the entire King James Bible so bad; you'd be incredibly surprised at what a man's memory is capable of storing.) As well, the whole twist smelled of 'God exists in this universe, people': even if his other senses were heightened, there's no way Eli should've been kicking that much ass as a blind man. It pushed the willing suspension of disbelief too far for something with its hyper-realistic post-apocalypse treatment.
This is something that My Soul to Take manages to avoid. Yes, the elements are there and fairly obvious once we get to the end, but they don't invalidate the movie entirely. I think this is more than just the fact that it's supernatural horror versus Fallout 3 with Bibles; I think it's also on the virtue that it balances its real world and spiritual elements perfectly. Is that a good thing? I'll let you decide. But I like to think it is.
This is Herr Wozzeck Reviews. I'll see you guys next time.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
"My Soul To Take"
Well, guys, unlike last year where I kept it back, this year, I'm going to proudly proclaim the following:
Horror season has begun! Hopefully I'll be able to review more horror films this October, but we'll see how it all turns up.
In the meantime... You ever wonder what happened with Wes Craven after NoES? Well... There was Scream. But after that, what did he do after original horror?
Well... he did today's movie.
My Soul To Take
The town of Riverdale was haunted by a mysterious mass murder sixteen years ago that resulted in seven premature births. On the anniversary of the murders, the seven are left to wander around living their lives. However, what they don't know is that the killer, dubbed "The Ripper" after his mysterious knife, has returned, and is picking them off one by one. It's thus up to Bug (Max Thierirot), one of the seven and someone who's been getting strange supernatural visitations lately, to stop the Ripper before all seven of them die.
Okay, so... It's Wes Craven recycling A Nightmare on Elm Street with the same general plot and same kinds of characters. However, he manages to make it different enough that it becomes its own entity. For example, there's no real muddling of perception of reality, mostly because it all takes place in the real world. There's no overly ridiculous deaths, given that. And the characters are different enough that we can do things better.
That includes everything bad that comes with that, however. Characters acting like idiots was excuseable in NoES, but here it's not since the dream-world angle is taken away. The deaths all feel more or less the same, similar to the problem that the NoES remake had with its lack of variety in deaths, although fortunately on that count it's quite a bit less noticeable.
And then there are a couple of additional problems added to that. Half of the movie's victims aren't terribly likeable, and one was so much of a jerk I let out an audible whoop when he got what was coming to him. We can also tell some of the plot developments coming from a mile away, and the tension kind of vanishes after those two factors are thrown in.
Fortunately, the movie manages to redeem itself with a fairly satisfying ending that, in addition to being fairly exciting, manages to tie up the loose ends reasonably well. (How it does that will be explored in the coming week's musing.) As well, the acting was very competent, and some people even stood out as being great. It all redeems itself in the end, even if some of the unlikeable victims and idiocy detract from that.
And this makes My Soul To Take a bit of a mixed bag. However, it ultimately succeeds as a competent horror film by virtue of its ending and the strength of the acting. It's also good for anyone who's getting tired of the incessant horror remakes that have been flooding the film industry lately for some original horror films.
Oh, and on the 3D? It didn't add too much, really, which I think is for the best.
2.5/4
If you want to go see it, go see it. If you don't want to go see it, don't.
This is Herr Wozzeck Reviews. I'll see you guys next time.
Horror season has begun! Hopefully I'll be able to review more horror films this October, but we'll see how it all turns up.
In the meantime... You ever wonder what happened with Wes Craven after NoES? Well... There was Scream. But after that, what did he do after original horror?
Well... he did today's movie.
My Soul To Take
The town of Riverdale was haunted by a mysterious mass murder sixteen years ago that resulted in seven premature births. On the anniversary of the murders, the seven are left to wander around living their lives. However, what they don't know is that the killer, dubbed "The Ripper" after his mysterious knife, has returned, and is picking them off one by one. It's thus up to Bug (Max Thierirot), one of the seven and someone who's been getting strange supernatural visitations lately, to stop the Ripper before all seven of them die.
Okay, so... It's Wes Craven recycling A Nightmare on Elm Street with the same general plot and same kinds of characters. However, he manages to make it different enough that it becomes its own entity. For example, there's no real muddling of perception of reality, mostly because it all takes place in the real world. There's no overly ridiculous deaths, given that. And the characters are different enough that we can do things better.
That includes everything bad that comes with that, however. Characters acting like idiots was excuseable in NoES, but here it's not since the dream-world angle is taken away. The deaths all feel more or less the same, similar to the problem that the NoES remake had with its lack of variety in deaths, although fortunately on that count it's quite a bit less noticeable.
And then there are a couple of additional problems added to that. Half of the movie's victims aren't terribly likeable, and one was so much of a jerk I let out an audible whoop when he got what was coming to him. We can also tell some of the plot developments coming from a mile away, and the tension kind of vanishes after those two factors are thrown in.
Fortunately, the movie manages to redeem itself with a fairly satisfying ending that, in addition to being fairly exciting, manages to tie up the loose ends reasonably well. (How it does that will be explored in the coming week's musing.) As well, the acting was very competent, and some people even stood out as being great. It all redeems itself in the end, even if some of the unlikeable victims and idiocy detract from that.
And this makes My Soul To Take a bit of a mixed bag. However, it ultimately succeeds as a competent horror film by virtue of its ending and the strength of the acting. It's also good for anyone who's getting tired of the incessant horror remakes that have been flooding the film industry lately for some original horror films.
Oh, and on the 3D? It didn't add too much, really, which I think is for the best.
2.5/4
If you want to go see it, go see it. If you don't want to go see it, don't.
This is Herr Wozzeck Reviews. I'll see you guys next time.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Flashback Reviews: Let the Right One In
So... I'm sure most of you are wondering why I didn't take the time to review Let Me In last weekend. Well, the first was that there was another, much more anticipated film out then (The Social Network), so there was that. The second... was that said horror film is a remake.
I honestly don't understand remakes all that much. Either they get remade badly, or not at all... I hear Let Me In actually isn't terrible, but still, it's a bit pointless I think.
So today, I thought I'd go back to the original Swedish film. Why? Because, as you can tell on my profile, it's one of my favorite horror films.
Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) (2008)
Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is a lonely boy who lives with his mom and gets bullied constantly by other boys. Then, the enigmatic Eli (Lina Leandersson) moves in next door to him, and the two begin to form a very close friendship. But when Eli shows up, people start dying in gruesome ways around the neighborhood. Oskar is thus set to find out that Eli is actually a vampire, and things get very complicated from there.
So... this is about as anti-Twilight as you can get. Yes, it's a vampire love story, but it's an atypical one from Stephenie Meyer wherein everything that made vampires so mystical is back with a vengeance. It's also very disturbingly graphic as a result. It's full on-horror here, and this gets it right.
And it's kind of beautiful in its own way. The movie has a very pale canvas surrounding it, and its use of color is restrained in that there's almost nothing there in terms of bright primary colors. (This is something the remake looks to have retained, and I am all the happier for it.) It certainly has a very jarring effect whenever blood does make an appearance within this whitewashed world; it's garish in its own disturbing little way, and it actually creates a great feeling of disgust. I think this alone makes the use of gore in this movie far more effective than it does in something like, say, Final Destination. Blood is disturbing enough on its own; but when it's tastefully used as the only incredibly bright primary color that shows up? That is even more disturbing. It's even more strange how the gore is treated in some spots; there's one part of the movie that I always remember since it's quite bloody-- but also somehow manages to be incredibly heartwarming at exactly the same time.
And that's the blood when it does show up; this is the kind of slow-burning horror that really ups the ante on the tension for what happens. It's... difficult to describe the way tension is built in this movie. Everything moves very slowly, so when we get violence it's quite unsettling. It also takes the time to build up everything relating to the characters, and we come to care for them as things unfold around them.
But overall, everything is held together from great performances from its two leads. It's quite a gambit for children to be able to hold a movie like this on their shoulders, particularly when whether the movie works or not hinges on your child actors. And the two leads nailed everything on the head. Oskar is appropriately frightened of many things around him, Eli is appropriately mysterious and alluring as necessary, and everything comes together in part because their performances are so great.
It's difficult for me to describe what makes Let the Right One In work as well as it does. Perhaps it's the infiltration of dread in an otherwise safe love story that makes the contrast work beautifully. Perhaps it's the visual style with it's white-washed landscapes only colored by the extremely rare (and prominent) blood. Perhaps it's the performances of the leads. But I think it's a combination of all of these factors, and it's this combination that makes this particular movie one of my favorite horror movies of all time.
4/4
A must-see picture.
This is Herr Wozzeck Reviews. I'll see you guys next time.
I honestly don't understand remakes all that much. Either they get remade badly, or not at all... I hear Let Me In actually isn't terrible, but still, it's a bit pointless I think.
So today, I thought I'd go back to the original Swedish film. Why? Because, as you can tell on my profile, it's one of my favorite horror films.
Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) (2008)
Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is a lonely boy who lives with his mom and gets bullied constantly by other boys. Then, the enigmatic Eli (Lina Leandersson) moves in next door to him, and the two begin to form a very close friendship. But when Eli shows up, people start dying in gruesome ways around the neighborhood. Oskar is thus set to find out that Eli is actually a vampire, and things get very complicated from there.
So... this is about as anti-Twilight as you can get. Yes, it's a vampire love story, but it's an atypical one from Stephenie Meyer wherein everything that made vampires so mystical is back with a vengeance. It's also very disturbingly graphic as a result. It's full on-horror here, and this gets it right.
And it's kind of beautiful in its own way. The movie has a very pale canvas surrounding it, and its use of color is restrained in that there's almost nothing there in terms of bright primary colors. (This is something the remake looks to have retained, and I am all the happier for it.) It certainly has a very jarring effect whenever blood does make an appearance within this whitewashed world; it's garish in its own disturbing little way, and it actually creates a great feeling of disgust. I think this alone makes the use of gore in this movie far more effective than it does in something like, say, Final Destination. Blood is disturbing enough on its own; but when it's tastefully used as the only incredibly bright primary color that shows up? That is even more disturbing. It's even more strange how the gore is treated in some spots; there's one part of the movie that I always remember since it's quite bloody-- but also somehow manages to be incredibly heartwarming at exactly the same time.
And that's the blood when it does show up; this is the kind of slow-burning horror that really ups the ante on the tension for what happens. It's... difficult to describe the way tension is built in this movie. Everything moves very slowly, so when we get violence it's quite unsettling. It also takes the time to build up everything relating to the characters, and we come to care for them as things unfold around them.
But overall, everything is held together from great performances from its two leads. It's quite a gambit for children to be able to hold a movie like this on their shoulders, particularly when whether the movie works or not hinges on your child actors. And the two leads nailed everything on the head. Oskar is appropriately frightened of many things around him, Eli is appropriately mysterious and alluring as necessary, and everything comes together in part because their performances are so great.
It's difficult for me to describe what makes Let the Right One In work as well as it does. Perhaps it's the infiltration of dread in an otherwise safe love story that makes the contrast work beautifully. Perhaps it's the visual style with it's white-washed landscapes only colored by the extremely rare (and prominent) blood. Perhaps it's the performances of the leads. But I think it's a combination of all of these factors, and it's this combination that makes this particular movie one of my favorite horror movies of all time.
4/4
A must-see picture.
This is Herr Wozzeck Reviews. I'll see you guys next time.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
The Seven Days of Sawdom: Day Three
Hello, all, and welcome back to my retrospective of the Saw franchise. So now on this third day of Sodom, quite a few things change about the Saw franchise. Darren Lynn Bousman is still at the helm, but the gore is really upped quite a bit in this latest installment.
Oh, and this is about the point in the Saw franchise where it begins to get extraordinarily difficult to talk about the movies themselves without spoiling the previous installments. So, in lieu of that:
There will be spoilers for extremely plot-sensitive details from the previous Saw movies. If you have not seen the first two installments of the franchise, turn back now and watch them before reading the review. You can't say I didn't warn you when your franchise is spoiled.
And I'm afraid that's not even the start of the crazy spoilers here...
So yeah. Since this summary can only go so far, I'll get started with today's movie...
Saw III
Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) is playing a final game, and in this final game he has wrangled Lynn (Bahar Soomekh) to keep him alive while Jeff (Angus Macfayden) completes a series of trials in which he is asked to spare those involved with a car accident that killed his son. And all the while, he watches over his apprentice Amanda (Shawnee Smith) as she presides over both trials.
And... shit goes down. Heavily. The ante is upped in terms of everything. So for starters?
Well, the gore is beginning to take incredible prominence through here. Where the first installment did with using a jump cut to help our imagination when people were severing their feet, now it willingly shows a whole lot of nasty stuff that goes on. We see someone's ribcage get torn out in graphic detail. We see a whole lot of other gore in there... And it concentrates on how much suffering is being inflicted that it begins to edge almost on the side of glorifying it. There are still screaming, but I got less of the human suffering aspect and more of the 'look at us, we're actually making people do this'.
And it takes a bit of the tension away as a result. Yes, we see the gore, but it's the actions of the characters that ultimately render it all moot. Jeff is supposed to be helping the people that he isn't supposed to like. But... half the time, he just ends up standing there sitting on his ass while the person is suffering very close to where he is. And it steals away from the tension, as you know that he's likely just going to stand there to let the poor people die. While it does make the character look like a moron, that's the least of the problems with this approach; it also makes it fairly obvious that the gore is the centerpiece of the film.
What it does right, however, is that it takes an angle of deconstructing Jigsaw's mythos. I had to mention Amanda in the summary; throughout much of the film, it does a lot of deconstruction of Jigsaw's M.O. with Amanda, the only one who's survived his games, and also his apprentice (as revealed at the end of Saw II-- hence the spoiler warning). It's clearly shown that Amanda hasn't learned anything from her test from the first movie, and this is highlighted through her actions in the movie. Thus, it's pretty clear that this was meant to be a swan song for the franchise and just why Jigsaw's methods are doomed to failure. This deconstruction alone makes it worthwile, but it doesn't explore it fully. And unfortunately, I can't blame the writers for this for reasons I'll get into after giving the rating.
Oh, and Jigsaw isn't the only one. It's also great for looking into the nature of forgiveness, given the nature of much of Jeff's trials. He basically is given an opportunity to spare everyone he encounters, and it's interesting to see his thought processes as he contemplates his son and how the people he has to save figure into things. This alone is enough to redeem the film in my eyes.
So in short? While the overreliance of gore to raise disgust at what is going on is beginning to chip away greatly at the tension, Saw III still more or less succeeds on the virtue of the fact that it works exceedingly well as a look into forgiveness and Jigsaw's M.O. It's pretty clear what the writers had in mind, but... well... I'll give the rating, talk about where the franchise is heading, and then talk about that.
2.5/4
If you want to go see it, go see it. If you don't want to see it, don't.
All right. So...
Here in Saw III is the franchise's real beginnings as a series that puts a lot of emphasis on so-termed 'torture porn'. Now I'm really beginning to see the reputation the series has gotten, just from the fact that it's all insane. And really, I began to think, 'wow, the prosthetics for this must've been insane' as time went on, which didn't help the tension all that much. But still, it begs a problem of why you must have gore in there in the first place. The original Saw did well enough by leaving it to the imagination that people were experiencing really gory deaths (as evidenced by the cut from Dr. Gordon sawing his foot off), so it baffles me why we would really need the gore.
In some ways, though, it's necessary for the deconstruction of Amanda's character, as she made a few traps for this one. The problem with her traps is all of them are inescapable, which goes against Jigsaw's general M.O. of giving his victims a chance to escape his traps (even if doing so would require absolutely superhuman levels of willpower to do so), and it gives a look into Amanda's character. And in looking at how Amanda operates, we find that Jigsaw's methods don't work. The gore has to figure into Amanda's traps somehow, and while we could've done without it for Jeff's, for Amanda's, I can't imagine we would be able to think of her traps the same way without actually seeing the terrifying things they do to their victims; the fact that they were inescapable combined with the gore combine to see just how messed up Amanda is.
But it doesn't go all the way with this, and unfortunately the writers aren't to blame for that. It's funny that the series' intentional swan song is the one that kicks off its reputation; if the writers would've had their way, they would've ended the franchise here. But if executives milked A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and Final Destination for all of those respective series' splatter-house potential, they were going to milk Saw for it as well. It's painfully obvious that we could've left it as a horror trilogy, and honestly it would've been great if we could have left it there with a third installment that more thoroughly explored why Jigsaw's MO doesn't work.
Alas, for we have Saw IV. And V. And VI. And 3D, coming to theaters at the end of this month. Horror executives don't really know when to end the series.
And this only decreases my hopes for the rest of the franchise, as it will no doubt only get more ludicrous from here. And that frightens me more than any of the games in this movie, to a degree I can't even begin to describe.
This is Herr Wozzeck Reviews, at the sunset of the Third Day of Sawdom. I'll see you guys next time, and I hope you'll join me on the Fourth Day of Sawdom when I review Saw IV.
Oh, and this is about the point in the Saw franchise where it begins to get extraordinarily difficult to talk about the movies themselves without spoiling the previous installments. So, in lieu of that:
There will be spoilers for extremely plot-sensitive details from the previous Saw movies. If you have not seen the first two installments of the franchise, turn back now and watch them before reading the review. You can't say I didn't warn you when your franchise is spoiled.
And I'm afraid that's not even the start of the crazy spoilers here...
So yeah. Since this summary can only go so far, I'll get started with today's movie...
Saw III
Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) is playing a final game, and in this final game he has wrangled Lynn (Bahar Soomekh) to keep him alive while Jeff (Angus Macfayden) completes a series of trials in which he is asked to spare those involved with a car accident that killed his son. And all the while, he watches over his apprentice Amanda (Shawnee Smith) as she presides over both trials.
And... shit goes down. Heavily. The ante is upped in terms of everything. So for starters?
Well, the gore is beginning to take incredible prominence through here. Where the first installment did with using a jump cut to help our imagination when people were severing their feet, now it willingly shows a whole lot of nasty stuff that goes on. We see someone's ribcage get torn out in graphic detail. We see a whole lot of other gore in there... And it concentrates on how much suffering is being inflicted that it begins to edge almost on the side of glorifying it. There are still screaming, but I got less of the human suffering aspect and more of the 'look at us, we're actually making people do this'.
And it takes a bit of the tension away as a result. Yes, we see the gore, but it's the actions of the characters that ultimately render it all moot. Jeff is supposed to be helping the people that he isn't supposed to like. But... half the time, he just ends up standing there sitting on his ass while the person is suffering very close to where he is. And it steals away from the tension, as you know that he's likely just going to stand there to let the poor people die. While it does make the character look like a moron, that's the least of the problems with this approach; it also makes it fairly obvious that the gore is the centerpiece of the film.
What it does right, however, is that it takes an angle of deconstructing Jigsaw's mythos. I had to mention Amanda in the summary; throughout much of the film, it does a lot of deconstruction of Jigsaw's M.O. with Amanda, the only one who's survived his games, and also his apprentice (as revealed at the end of Saw II-- hence the spoiler warning). It's clearly shown that Amanda hasn't learned anything from her test from the first movie, and this is highlighted through her actions in the movie. Thus, it's pretty clear that this was meant to be a swan song for the franchise and just why Jigsaw's methods are doomed to failure. This deconstruction alone makes it worthwile, but it doesn't explore it fully. And unfortunately, I can't blame the writers for this for reasons I'll get into after giving the rating.
Oh, and Jigsaw isn't the only one. It's also great for looking into the nature of forgiveness, given the nature of much of Jeff's trials. He basically is given an opportunity to spare everyone he encounters, and it's interesting to see his thought processes as he contemplates his son and how the people he has to save figure into things. This alone is enough to redeem the film in my eyes.
So in short? While the overreliance of gore to raise disgust at what is going on is beginning to chip away greatly at the tension, Saw III still more or less succeeds on the virtue of the fact that it works exceedingly well as a look into forgiveness and Jigsaw's M.O. It's pretty clear what the writers had in mind, but... well... I'll give the rating, talk about where the franchise is heading, and then talk about that.
2.5/4
If you want to go see it, go see it. If you don't want to see it, don't.
All right. So...
Here in Saw III is the franchise's real beginnings as a series that puts a lot of emphasis on so-termed 'torture porn'. Now I'm really beginning to see the reputation the series has gotten, just from the fact that it's all insane. And really, I began to think, 'wow, the prosthetics for this must've been insane' as time went on, which didn't help the tension all that much. But still, it begs a problem of why you must have gore in there in the first place. The original Saw did well enough by leaving it to the imagination that people were experiencing really gory deaths (as evidenced by the cut from Dr. Gordon sawing his foot off), so it baffles me why we would really need the gore.
In some ways, though, it's necessary for the deconstruction of Amanda's character, as she made a few traps for this one. The problem with her traps is all of them are inescapable, which goes against Jigsaw's general M.O. of giving his victims a chance to escape his traps (even if doing so would require absolutely superhuman levels of willpower to do so), and it gives a look into Amanda's character. And in looking at how Amanda operates, we find that Jigsaw's methods don't work. The gore has to figure into Amanda's traps somehow, and while we could've done without it for Jeff's, for Amanda's, I can't imagine we would be able to think of her traps the same way without actually seeing the terrifying things they do to their victims; the fact that they were inescapable combined with the gore combine to see just how messed up Amanda is.
But it doesn't go all the way with this, and unfortunately the writers aren't to blame for that. It's funny that the series' intentional swan song is the one that kicks off its reputation; if the writers would've had their way, they would've ended the franchise here. But if executives milked A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and Final Destination for all of those respective series' splatter-house potential, they were going to milk Saw for it as well. It's painfully obvious that we could've left it as a horror trilogy, and honestly it would've been great if we could have left it there with a third installment that more thoroughly explored why Jigsaw's MO doesn't work.
Alas, for we have Saw IV. And V. And VI. And 3D, coming to theaters at the end of this month. Horror executives don't really know when to end the series.
And this only decreases my hopes for the rest of the franchise, as it will no doubt only get more ludicrous from here. And that frightens me more than any of the games in this movie, to a degree I can't even begin to describe.
This is Herr Wozzeck Reviews, at the sunset of the Third Day of Sawdom. I'll see you guys next time, and I hope you'll join me on the Fourth Day of Sawdom when I review Saw IV.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
"The Social Network"
Okay, so... What to say about Facebook? There's not a whole lot really, other than the fact that it's one of the most popular social networking sites that's around today. It's turned its founder into a billionare, it allows people to stay connected...
...and it got a movie made about its early years. Yeah, I didn't see that one coming either.
Since I'm sure you'll know what I mean, I'll cut to the chase and get to today's movie.
The Social Network
Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) is an undergrad at Harvard University. With Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), he forms the Facebook website. It becomes popular very quickly, and also becomes embroiled in controversy when first the Winklevoss twins (Armie Hammer) accuse Mark of stealing their idea, and then Eduardo when he starts to get slowly screwed over by Mark and Napster founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake).
And that's all I can summarize. It's tough to make a summary of something you can read up about on Wikipedia as being stuff that actually happened. Same problem as what comes up with The Tudors, if I read certain TVGuides right.
So yeah, this movie. Well... it's about the founding of Facebook, yes. But if you're going in there expecting that to be the only thing it's about... you might want to reevaluate that stance.
I mean that in the best possible sense. It's only about Facebook on a superficial level; really, it's about the people surrounding it, and you might as well have fictionalized the whole thing because of how well it works on every level. David Fincher really takes us on a journey, and it's every bit as engaging as a movie about stuff like this wouldn't be under a lesser director. It helps that it's supplied with an incredibly tight script that can be hilarious at one point and serious with the turn of a dime. Its sharp script could have floundered under a less skilled director, but David Fincher made everything work absolutely beautifully.
It's also helped by exceedingly great performances from its cast. Nobody really stands out in this cast, but that should be treated as a good thing on the principle that everybody did really well. I'll point out Justin Timberlake, seeing as how he's gone a long way from being the slightly annoying Artie from Shrek the Third: here he proves himself an actor capable of keeping up with everybody else around him, especially Eisenberg, who does everything right as Mark Zuckerberg. They were surrounded by what is easily the best ensemble cast I've seen in a long time. (Oh ,yeah, and Armie Hammer as twins? Incredible, not to mention that the apparent CGI face job was impossible to notice.)
I... It's tough to talk about The Social Network. It's that good. I'll just tell you now that it gets everything right, and it's extremely engaging as a result. The movie runs at two hours and one minute. By the time we reached the end, I actually felt the movie was too short, and yet if it went on longer it would've encroached on something. This I think is the mark of truly great film making, and it makes The Social Network one of the year's best movies.
4/4
A must-see picture of the year.
This is Herr Wozzeck Reviews. I'll see you guys next time.
...and it got a movie made about its early years. Yeah, I didn't see that one coming either.
Since I'm sure you'll know what I mean, I'll cut to the chase and get to today's movie.
The Social Network
Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) is an undergrad at Harvard University. With Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), he forms the Facebook website. It becomes popular very quickly, and also becomes embroiled in controversy when first the Winklevoss twins (Armie Hammer) accuse Mark of stealing their idea, and then Eduardo when he starts to get slowly screwed over by Mark and Napster founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake).
And that's all I can summarize. It's tough to make a summary of something you can read up about on Wikipedia as being stuff that actually happened. Same problem as what comes up with The Tudors, if I read certain TVGuides right.
So yeah, this movie. Well... it's about the founding of Facebook, yes. But if you're going in there expecting that to be the only thing it's about... you might want to reevaluate that stance.
I mean that in the best possible sense. It's only about Facebook on a superficial level; really, it's about the people surrounding it, and you might as well have fictionalized the whole thing because of how well it works on every level. David Fincher really takes us on a journey, and it's every bit as engaging as a movie about stuff like this wouldn't be under a lesser director. It helps that it's supplied with an incredibly tight script that can be hilarious at one point and serious with the turn of a dime. Its sharp script could have floundered under a less skilled director, but David Fincher made everything work absolutely beautifully.
It's also helped by exceedingly great performances from its cast. Nobody really stands out in this cast, but that should be treated as a good thing on the principle that everybody did really well. I'll point out Justin Timberlake, seeing as how he's gone a long way from being the slightly annoying Artie from Shrek the Third: here he proves himself an actor capable of keeping up with everybody else around him, especially Eisenberg, who does everything right as Mark Zuckerberg. They were surrounded by what is easily the best ensemble cast I've seen in a long time. (Oh ,yeah, and Armie Hammer as twins? Incredible, not to mention that the apparent CGI face job was impossible to notice.)
I... It's tough to talk about The Social Network. It's that good. I'll just tell you now that it gets everything right, and it's extremely engaging as a result. The movie runs at two hours and one minute. By the time we reached the end, I actually felt the movie was too short, and yet if it went on longer it would've encroached on something. This I think is the mark of truly great film making, and it makes The Social Network one of the year's best movies.
4/4
A must-see picture of the year.
This is Herr Wozzeck Reviews. I'll see you guys next time.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
The Seven Days of Sawdom: Day Two
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Seven Days of Sawdom. Today, we continue along where we left off in the franchise, which shouldn't be too bad. So with that said, I'll cut to today's movie, as you know the drill...
Saw II
Detective Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) is in a bit of a dilemma: the Jigsaw killer (Tobin Bell) has been caught. But it's all part of his plan, as his son Daniel (Erik Knudsen) is trapped in a house with seven other people that are being exposed to a potent nerve gas, one of whom is a survivor of one of Jigsaw's games (Shawnee Smith). It becomes a race against time as Eric tries to save Daniel and the seven people trapped in the house try to fight their way out.
The first thing that comes to my mind is that there seems to be a staple of the series arising already: they show lots of human suffering, and they don't try to make it look pretty. The amount of seriousness invested in these movies is beginning to skyrocket; the treatment of death as an absolute is incredible here, and it never takes it self too lightly. The characters too are shown to be vulnerable, and after a while we begin to really hope they'll survive against the improbable odds stacked against them.
And this is the first of the franchise where we really start to see a reliance of gore to get the point across about how horrendous this all is. Now the depictions of death get graphic, from one guy getting shot in the eye on camera to where we see the slitting of a throat on screen. The amount of gore gets a bit of an upgrade, and it becomes quite horrific.
Unfortunately, the tension that was prevalent throughout the last installment suffers a slight dip. I won't blame it on the gore, as there are a lot of other factors at play here (I'll go into it more once I give my rating), but a lot of the tension of 'holy shit, what's gonna happen now' isn't really as dire as it was. But I will explain more when I give my thoughts on the direction the franchise is starting to take here. I attribute it to a change of director (Darren Lyn Bousman took over the franchise from James Wan), but again, I'll go more into that after the rating.
This is not to say there's no tension at all, however; there's still a certain tug at our 'will they make it' sense. There's really only one asshole victim in this movie, and fortunately the others are treated as victims of something greater than themselves. As well, the tension is helped greatly by a cleverly constructed plot twist at the end (which I will not spoil for you, but I can't guarantee it won't be spoiled somewhere down the line as the franchise continues), and the plot twist is very well executed. It also starts to build backstory for the Jigsaw killer through his scenes with Eric Matthews, and we begin to get a fascinating character study.
So while it's a step down from the previous installment in terms of the build-up of tension, Saw II still works as a competent horror film. I don't really have much else to say, so...
3/4
It has a few problems, but it's still worth checking out.
Okay, so my current thoughts about the franchise?
Well, I attribute the slight drop of tension to a few things. The one is that they're starting to unravel the mystery of the Jigsaw killer. I think this works great for character studies, but really movie, take it one step at a time. After all, things stop being scary the more we know about them. I'm beginning to sense that the focus is now turning on the traps rather than the killer, but it's trying to hang on to the character of the Jigsaw killer. While it's admirable, it does distract slightly. Given what I've heard of the rest of the franchise, I think it might tear itself apart.
Another thing is that they reveal why the people are in the house a little too early for my liking. I would've liked it if they had kept why they were in the house secret for about five minutes longer than they actually did. That said, though, the twist at the end was beautifully executed, so I'll forgive them for that.
The last thing? It's starting to rely on the gore a little more as a device to build dread. Fortunately, the gore was fairly mild here; headshots, a slashed throat, all fairly easy stuff to swallow. The traps aren't too elaborate, but we'll see as the franchise goes on, because from what I hear they get fairly elaborate. If this is the case, I'm a little afraid about what we'll see as the gore gets more complicated.
So as for how it'll turn out? If what I hear about the franchise is correct, then it'll start going way downhill real soon. But again, we'll see. We haven't gotten to the two dreaded installments yet, so there is still hope for the franchise, I think.
This is Herr Wozzeck Reviews, at the sunset of the Second Day of Sawdom. I'll see you guys next time, and I hope you'll join me on the Third Day of Sawdom when I review Saw III.
Saw II
Detective Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) is in a bit of a dilemma: the Jigsaw killer (Tobin Bell) has been caught. But it's all part of his plan, as his son Daniel (Erik Knudsen) is trapped in a house with seven other people that are being exposed to a potent nerve gas, one of whom is a survivor of one of Jigsaw's games (Shawnee Smith). It becomes a race against time as Eric tries to save Daniel and the seven people trapped in the house try to fight their way out.
The first thing that comes to my mind is that there seems to be a staple of the series arising already: they show lots of human suffering, and they don't try to make it look pretty. The amount of seriousness invested in these movies is beginning to skyrocket; the treatment of death as an absolute is incredible here, and it never takes it self too lightly. The characters too are shown to be vulnerable, and after a while we begin to really hope they'll survive against the improbable odds stacked against them.
And this is the first of the franchise where we really start to see a reliance of gore to get the point across about how horrendous this all is. Now the depictions of death get graphic, from one guy getting shot in the eye on camera to where we see the slitting of a throat on screen. The amount of gore gets a bit of an upgrade, and it becomes quite horrific.
Unfortunately, the tension that was prevalent throughout the last installment suffers a slight dip. I won't blame it on the gore, as there are a lot of other factors at play here (I'll go into it more once I give my rating), but a lot of the tension of 'holy shit, what's gonna happen now' isn't really as dire as it was. But I will explain more when I give my thoughts on the direction the franchise is starting to take here. I attribute it to a change of director (Darren Lyn Bousman took over the franchise from James Wan), but again, I'll go more into that after the rating.
This is not to say there's no tension at all, however; there's still a certain tug at our 'will they make it' sense. There's really only one asshole victim in this movie, and fortunately the others are treated as victims of something greater than themselves. As well, the tension is helped greatly by a cleverly constructed plot twist at the end (which I will not spoil for you, but I can't guarantee it won't be spoiled somewhere down the line as the franchise continues), and the plot twist is very well executed. It also starts to build backstory for the Jigsaw killer through his scenes with Eric Matthews, and we begin to get a fascinating character study.
So while it's a step down from the previous installment in terms of the build-up of tension, Saw II still works as a competent horror film. I don't really have much else to say, so...
3/4
It has a few problems, but it's still worth checking out.
Okay, so my current thoughts about the franchise?
Well, I attribute the slight drop of tension to a few things. The one is that they're starting to unravel the mystery of the Jigsaw killer. I think this works great for character studies, but really movie, take it one step at a time. After all, things stop being scary the more we know about them. I'm beginning to sense that the focus is now turning on the traps rather than the killer, but it's trying to hang on to the character of the Jigsaw killer. While it's admirable, it does distract slightly. Given what I've heard of the rest of the franchise, I think it might tear itself apart.
Another thing is that they reveal why the people are in the house a little too early for my liking. I would've liked it if they had kept why they were in the house secret for about five minutes longer than they actually did. That said, though, the twist at the end was beautifully executed, so I'll forgive them for that.
The last thing? It's starting to rely on the gore a little more as a device to build dread. Fortunately, the gore was fairly mild here; headshots, a slashed throat, all fairly easy stuff to swallow. The traps aren't too elaborate, but we'll see as the franchise goes on, because from what I hear they get fairly elaborate. If this is the case, I'm a little afraid about what we'll see as the gore gets more complicated.
So as for how it'll turn out? If what I hear about the franchise is correct, then it'll start going way downhill real soon. But again, we'll see. We haven't gotten to the two dreaded installments yet, so there is still hope for the franchise, I think.
This is Herr Wozzeck Reviews, at the sunset of the Second Day of Sawdom. I'll see you guys next time, and I hope you'll join me on the Third Day of Sawdom when I review Saw III.
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