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Feb. 11th, 2006 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cblj_backupSo I tried to watch Saw II last night.
I didn't find the original Saw terribly inspiring or disgusting or anything, really. The violence was pretty graphic (I fast-forwarded through the more gory bits) but aside from that it didn't leave much of an impression. I watched Saw II mainly because I wanted to see if it would answer my one curiosity, ie "Will they milk another sequel out of it" (it did). Hollywood does so love a trilogy...
But I got about a third of the way into it and realised I was checking the time-elapsed box on the DVD program every few minutes. The movie was boring -- it was basically an Escape The Room game where I couldn't play along, and while I admit to a sekrit passion for Escape The Room games, the fun is in the playing, not in the watching shallow idiots play. Even if one were to watch it for the vicarious thrill of seeing people get maimed and murdered, which interests some though it isn't my idea of a good time, the suspense is stretched out for so long that it just becomes tedious. You know someone's going to die and you can pretty much figure out how, which kills most of the point of horror films -- the surprise.
Now, granted, watching the first third did raise two other questions -- will Detective No Chin survive, and will his horrible son survive. But his son was horrible, the epitome of boring "I'm so troubled despite having a middle-class existence and all my teeth" film teenagerhood, and you're not supposed to like Detective No Chin. Fortunately for me, when I flicked to the last ten minutes, it not only answered all three questions but recapped the whole film in flashbacks. Kind of them, I thought.
Basically, I've come to realise, the Saw movies are about watching horrible people meet violent deaths. With just a little more subtlety and a little less misapplied Noir philosophy, they could have been really interesting. They could have been cinematic versions of Poe's "The Pit And The Pendulum" or "The Mask Of The Red Death".
But...they're not. They're just odes to imaginative violence, dully retreading old morals about man's inhumanity to man that were worn out before cinema even existed.
I didn't find the original Saw terribly inspiring or disgusting or anything, really. The violence was pretty graphic (I fast-forwarded through the more gory bits) but aside from that it didn't leave much of an impression. I watched Saw II mainly because I wanted to see if it would answer my one curiosity, ie "Will they milk another sequel out of it" (it did). Hollywood does so love a trilogy...
But I got about a third of the way into it and realised I was checking the time-elapsed box on the DVD program every few minutes. The movie was boring -- it was basically an Escape The Room game where I couldn't play along, and while I admit to a sekrit passion for Escape The Room games, the fun is in the playing, not in the watching shallow idiots play. Even if one were to watch it for the vicarious thrill of seeing people get maimed and murdered, which interests some though it isn't my idea of a good time, the suspense is stretched out for so long that it just becomes tedious. You know someone's going to die and you can pretty much figure out how, which kills most of the point of horror films -- the surprise.
Now, granted, watching the first third did raise two other questions -- will Detective No Chin survive, and will his horrible son survive. But his son was horrible, the epitome of boring "I'm so troubled despite having a middle-class existence and all my teeth" film teenagerhood, and you're not supposed to like Detective No Chin. Fortunately for me, when I flicked to the last ten minutes, it not only answered all three questions but recapped the whole film in flashbacks. Kind of them, I thought.
Basically, I've come to realise, the Saw movies are about watching horrible people meet violent deaths. With just a little more subtlety and a little less misapplied Noir philosophy, they could have been really interesting. They could have been cinematic versions of Poe's "The Pit And The Pendulum" or "The Mask Of The Red Death".
But...they're not. They're just odes to imaginative violence, dully retreading old morals about man's inhumanity to man that were worn out before cinema even existed.
