Cultural Gap Film #16: Saw

Relevant elements: General torture-based plots, that creepy Jigsaw doll thing

Why it resonated: Various cultural critics have pointed to different reasons for the sharply rising interest in "torture porn" in the mid-'00s, but a lot of them seem to want to pin it on 9/11. It's also possible that America was just ready for the serial killer thriller to move in this direction after the genre had become stale and audience tolerance for depictions of physical mutilation had increased.

General comments on the film: For the number of surprises--and no, I'm not talking about the hacky plotting; I'm talking about the fact that Cary Elwes is in it, Danny Glover is in it (one might have supposed that he was too old for this), and it isn't quite as gory as I'd been led to believe--you'd think this movie would be more interesting. 

There are a few solid touches for a thriller of this type: the jarring in medias res opening works fairly well, the choice of a mannequin factory for the psycho's hideout is a bit predictable, but still manages to twang that uncanny chord, and the reworking of the limited-vision bit from the end of The Silence of the Lambs using an old-fashioned photo flash as the only available light source does what it is intended to do. But it doesn't come close to overcoming the dreadful acting and parade gimmicky moments, leaving me to wonder if it would have been more compelling if the entirety of the movie took place in the room with the two men without all the conveniently-remembered flashbacks and outside drama. I guess Elwes's hammy growling and the other guy's screechy whining would quickly overflow the narrow space, though, so maybe the best thing to do would be to just present an even more extensive catalog of Jigsaw's intricate human traps...which I'm sure is what the unfathomable number of sequels provide.