Thread by @Remember_Sarah

get in losers we're watching Saw

TIL Dr. Lawrence Gordon went to Indian University, of all places

So, I know almost nothing about anatomy, and I would love to hear an explanation of how exactly the reverse bear trap is supposed to kill you

okay....the fact that Billy the Puppet is able to move his mouth in a way perfectly synchronized to Jigsaw's tape makes me wonder if he is technically an audioanimatronic

the saw franchise is also primarily interested in torturing men and you know, I appreciate that

Saw: two guys pretending to be American with diminishing returns

so, I don't like to try to defend the Saw franchise from the "torture porn" charge, because I don't like lying. I always focus on the yes, and. BUT it's worth noting that the first Saw shows you a lot less than you end the movie feeling like you've seen, which is rare

I actually counted this time and we see exactly TWO SECONDS of sawing foot off action. The rest of that is conveyed to us by Cary Elwes just acting it to pieces. and uh.... if I'd seen this when I was younger, oh, the slash fanfic I would have written

This movie is like a cross between Seven and Waiting for Godot

And now I'm moving on to SAW II, which is definitely torture porn! Saw II feels the most awkward to me because it's that classic sequel to a low budget horror movie no one expected to be a hit: oh fuck, what do we do now?

As usual, the solution apparently is to try to do basically the same thing but with more money and more actors and a new director. this movie also introduces the format of having a Jigsaw trap before the opening credits, like James Bond's pre-credits side adventures

Our alleged protagonist this time is Donnie Wahlberg, and once again I must say I love this movie's commitment to exploring the trauma and tenacity of middle-aged men as opposed to teen girls

how do you think jigsaw feels about people who smoke weed

Jigsaw sitting in an abandoned steel factory eating a big bowl of soup while he waits for the SWAT team to show up is quite the mood

in Saw VI we learn that Jigsaw's medical insurance denied him the coverage that could have prolonged his life. so my question is, what is the financial situation of a man who CAN'T afford cancer treatment but CAN afford a bunch of warehouses, surveillance equipment, machinery...

also where exactly is Jigsaw sourcing all of this slow-acting poison to which only he has the antidote

no shade on saw II, honestly. it builds off a movie that was never intended to have a sequel, gives it a new plot format that stays in linear time and provides an easy template for further sequels, and still has a fucking hell of a twist

the convoluted silliness of these movies is exactly what I love most about them

Saw II is also the first movie where Jigsaw himself, aka John Kramer, played by Tobin Bell, has significant screentime, and emerges as someone capable of carrying the whole series, which he ends up doing, even though five of the eight movies take place after his death

these movies are also fun because they're mysteries for people who can't guess the endings of mysteries very often

I love the way Tobin Bell plays Jigsaw. Actors tend to use serial killer/monster roles as an excuse to do all the extravagant overacting/strongman stuff they typically deny themselves, but Jigsaw actually just feels like someone who has almost no energy and is still killing

Saw II also makes the shift from the victims of the trap being the main characters, as they were int he first movie, to the cops being our protagonists. By the third movie the villains will be our protagonists, and by the fourth movie our villain will be a cop.

the first really prolonged and awful death scene in the series happens about 40 minutes into Saw II, when a guy named Obi gets burned to death. you don't see that much but it goes on for quite a while and is agonizing to sit through.

Now this is where I don't say the Saw movies aren't torture porn, but instead defend the act of watching torture porn, which I am doing tonight in order to stave off my election anxiety. Why am I doing this? Because it is one of the most completely distracting forms of media.

I realized this when I first watched all the Saw movies, last summer. They totally took me out of all my anxiety and dread about the world. And really did make me appreciate being alive. And the tension and release of those gory scenes felt cathartic.

these movies are also captivating because something horrifying or ridiculous or horrifying AND ridiculous happens about every six minutes

If you can watch Amanda's Big Scary Scene in Saw II which I won't even describe here because oh my god without going into a full body cringe, then wow

jigsaw loves:

--teamwork
--puns
--puppets
--crosswords

jigsaw hates:

--smokers
--cops, probably
--voyeurs, intriguingly
--capitalism

Jigsaw targets Detective Matthews because he tends to use excessive force, which is rather woke of him, especially in 2005

well I got distracting by the election for a second and that was a bad idea, back to my lovely safe saw fest

more like wokesaw

my biggest problem with saw II is that it deploys the "hello zepp" theme at a pretty anticlimactic moment, which is a niche complaint honestly

but don't worry, we also get to hear it TWICE this time

#girlboss

so this is where we start to get into the theme of "you're making a mockery of the jigsaw name, you just want to kill people!" as if jigsaw himself does not want to do just that. but you know, no one can do everything. jigsaw is a great machinist but not great at self-awareness

I'm starting saw III in about five minutes! come watch with me.

Okay, I'm starting this monster

by saw III we are solidly in a soap opera; we open with the lasts moments of the previous movie and are plunged right back into that story as if we're expected to know what it was about

the first scene of saw III is also where we start to see what I think makes it so satisfying as a series: its obsessive returns to the same characters, places, and moments.

Saw III is also when we start seeing the classic saw trap--the person waking up inside a device that will kill them unless they do something maiming and painful in a short amount of time, or having to navigate a series of game rooms--through the whole movie.

Like Jason getting his hockey mask in Friday the 13th III

this is also the point at which we must start to wonder: just HOW many warehouses does Jigsaw own?

FATHER

this series has themes

With every subsequent saw movie, the main person trying to survive the traps gets less and less important. This time it's Angus McFadyen and his barely suppressed Scottish accent

this movie is also VERY gross at moments, and I love a gross horror movie

a lot of the most intense parts of saw III are just.... jigsaw kidnaps a doctor and makes her do crude surgery on his hemorrhaging brain and we watch the whole thing. And as you know, I LOVE crude diy medicine in a scary movie

but mostly it's scary because it's a depiction of brain surgery and brain surgery is just scary enough

so two thirds of the way through saw III, angus mcfadyen is going through a series of rooms where he has to free people from traps and prove he can forgive his son's killer, but we don't really care about him because it's ACTUALLY about jigsaw getting brain surgery...

and as he fades in and out he starts having visions of...

His ex-wife Jill Tuck, or as I call her, Mrs. Jigsaw

Jigsaw says "I love you" while having a vision of his ex (who we, the audience, have never seen before this moment), and thinks he's saying it to the surgeon who SHE kidnapped to do brain surgery on him after she survived his trap and became his apprentice killer!!! it's a lot

DO YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN about why I love this series

*Amanda thinks he's saying it to the surgeon

We then watch a flashback of Jigsaw and Amanda setting up the game before the beginning of the first Saw. I think what this movie is best at across the board is fan service: each movie puts a lot of energy into showing you things you'll care about if you've always been watching

Love how this movie keeps forgetting about its kinda-sorta protagonists, whats his name who has to keep going through the trap rooms. We're seeing him again for the first time in about twenty minutes

I know there's currently a Saw sequel in the works but if anyone wanted to do ANOTHER one someday (and why not?), the Denlons' daughter would be a cool character to return to

lolz

thread got broken but it picks up here:

https://twitter.com/Remember_Sarah/status/1323812381089148938?s=20

Saw III is one of those movies that flashes back to things that happened five seconds ago, which I love

where would jigsaw be in the age of voice memos

On to Saw IV

this movie begins with Jigsaw getting autopsied, and just just watching that! for a while! and being shown in great detail that he is really, super dead. and he really is and there are no twists. don't worry. twists are coming.

okay there's not exactly a twist but: oh my god jigsaw coated a little tape in wax and then swallowed it and the doctor finds it!!! omg!!!

NO ONE loves tapes more than jigsaw

the tape says "the games have just begun" omg

HOWEVER, the opening autopsy sequence is the ONLY part of Saw IV that actually takes place after the events of saw III, the rest of it takes place DURING the events of the previous movie because of course it does

Saw is weird and maybe even unique for being a slasher series about adults

It's also VERY Australian, by which I mean the director of the first movie and the writer of the first three were Australian, as was Costas Mandylor, who stars in installments 4-7

Jigsaw's lessons are very simple: appreciate your family, don't smoke, don't have affairs, don't take life for granted in really nebulous ways that are offensive only to him, and you'll be golden

Where do we think the Saw movies take place?

Saw IV and Saw V are about cops killing cops and you know what, I dig it

Saw IV and Saw V ALSO feature Luke from Gilmore Girls and he's....a delight

We see her briefly in Saw III, but Saw IV really makes Jill Tuck a character, and she is my favorite character.

And Saw IV is also where we learn that when Jill was pregnant, Jigsaw made their baby.......a tiny Billy doll

In Saw we learn that Jigsaw started killing (sorry, making games) after his cancer diagnosis made him decide to show people how to appreciate life, and in Saw IV we learn it's NOT JUST THAT his wife had a miscarriage and that's REALLY why he's..... technically not a murderer

By Saw IV we're into the sweet spot, and the series feels like a really gory Jane the Virgin

now it is time for Saw V

so, it would be impossible to recap the ridiculously convoluted events of Saw IV here, and you should just watch it and enjoy the journey, but BASICALLY there was a cop named Hoffman who we barely saw in Saw III and who turned out to be working with Jigsaw all along...

...and who set up a series of Jigsaw-like games for another cop. Meanwhile he's being pursued by an FBI agent played by Luke from Gilmore girls. SO MANY COPS

but anyway, Detective Hoffman has been a protege of Jigsaw's alongside Amanda, who survived the reverse bear pit in Saw. And as early as Saw III we start hearing about how Jigsaw's proteges are failing him, how they aren't giving people tests that allow them to survive...

...only daddy jigsaw can do it right. and this isn't murder, as he reassures us over and over again; it's testing people. sure.

but another thing I love about the movies from saw IV on is that they don't try particularly hard to keep us from coming to the conclusion that jigsaw is just a crazy, grieving, nihilistic dying guy with no philosophy at all

in saw IV we learn that his first game was one he designed for the addict who accidentally caused his wife to miscarry. and when the guy survives the game and comes after jigsaw, jigsaw kills him. so....... yeah he's into revenge, pettier and pettier over time

Jigsaw is alive but seen only in flashbacks in Saw IV, but by Saw V we're in a universe where those he lives behind--Hoffman, his apprentice killer, and his ex-wife, Jill--can feel close to him only by "continuing his work," aka killing people

somehow this movie feels MUCH more canadian than the first four

god bless jigsaw, lover of analogue media til the end, who dies in the year of our lord 2008 and wills his wife a VHS tape

Saw V is a movie about a cop murdering a fed who correctly suspects him of being a copycat serial killer, with a side plot about five people going through a bunch of jigsaw trap rooms for some reason, and luke from gilmore girls gives himself a tracheotomy with a frickin pen

*reverse bear trap

in a lovely bit of fan service--and to understand the sweetness of this is to get horror fans--Saw V goes back to one of the iconic original crime scenes from the first movie, the razor wire game

you tell yourself that jigsaw

Saw V includes a lot of nostalgic returns to the first movie, which is lovely in part because it feels almost NOTHING like the place where the franchise started. but we all agree we love that place and want to pay homage with the story now

succession but about a family of serial killers (I have not seen succession)

I'm suddenly pretty tired but I've only got 19 minutes left in this movie! and then I'm gonna go to bed

the five people navigating the maze of saw traps in this movie (and getting killed off) are people we don't have that much energy to focus on because of all the antics of jigsaw + hoffman + luke + flashback amanda + jill, & are also idiots easily turned against each other

so basically you have a choice between a group of familiar murderers and a group of unfamiliar murderers. and you feel more attached and interested in the familiar ones. which is how villains become main characters in these horror series...but never more entertainingly than here

But what I like most about Saw V is that it has five saws in it

Goodnight!!!

well, I'm afraid to go to sleep. but I'm imagining what our friend jigsaw would say: "I want to play a game. The human body is a miraculous creation. But without sufficient sleep, it can do nothing. Can you resist you instincts to fret and pace, and fight another day?"

Hello! It is the next day and democracy is still in jeopary. Let's watch SAW VI, or, as our french brethren pronounce it, "Saucisse"

Let's get caught up with some BIG SPOILERS for the first 5 Saw movies

In Saw IV, we learned Detective Mark Hoffman has assumed Jigsaw's mantle since his death. In Saw V, we learned he started out as a copycat killer before Jigsaw took him on as his protege...

In Saw V, we watched FBI agent Strahm (aka Luke from Gilmore Girls), survive the trap Hoffman put him in when Hoffman killed off basically every other cop he worked with and made it look like Jigsaw did it, and then we watch Strahm figure out Hoffman is working with Jigsaw...

...and at the end of Saw V, Hoffman kills Strahm in a way I won't spoil and gets away scot free, the end!!!! meanwhile Mrs. Jigsaw is still at large, and Jigsaw willed his reverse bear trap to her. What shall she do with it? Can Hoffman stand having a rival for dead daddy's love?

What was in the envelope that Amanda read at the end of Saw III that made her so upset right before she decided to kill Lynn Denlon? Will we see a ton of flashbacks to Tobin Bell as Jigsaw even though he's been dead for two movies at this point? Will there be themes?

And we're off! This opening trap is wild, has TWO people in it, and one actually survives. we're back to basics with a big Seven ripoff I mean loving homage

the first saw took an entire movie to build up to someone cutting a limb off and this one gets to it in about five minutes, which is roughly the distance between any movie and its sixth franchise installment

now we visit Hoffman, who has just finished killing Strahm and is moping around his crime scene, and now we meet THIS fucking guy, who is a health insurance suit and is therefore doomed

big tell whenever a canadian playing a greedy american has to say "dollars"

there is now a Jigsaw industrial complex in universe

at this point we have to ask: Hoffman has gotten credit for catching Jigsaw and all his helpers and avoided being found out as a murderer himself; why keep going? But he does. This movie is about him implementing Jigsaw's "final" gore bonanza. Because of...love?

I think I love Mrs. Jigsaw so much because she's a basic wine mom who happened to marry a budding serial killer, which is totally the type of person who actually ends up aiding and abetting a serial killer, honestly. just a target hottie in a drapey sweater

We're flashing back to the start of Saw IV, where Hoffman played the mini cassette that Jigsaw coated in wax, and that basically said "you believe you will remain untested..... but you won't!"

The FBI doesn't buy Hoffman's story that Strahm is the real Jigsaw killer. They're going to analyze the voice on the tape in Strahm's trap to find out the identity of the speaker.....which you'd think would be something they would have done when they were looking for Jigsaw

Hoffman meets up with Jill at the clinic where she works as a doctor, which is not suspicious at all, and they have a power struggle over Jigsaw's last wishes/final game that remind me of how I think Julianne Moore and Tom Cruise would have interacted the day after Magnolia

Hoffman wants complete control over the game; he wants to be the chosen one. Everyone is always trying to force out Jill!!

26 minutes in we start the game. this movie has killed off most of its interesting characters, so when Jigsaw shows up in flashbacks and tapes, he's so charismatic compared to everyone else, the victim so unlikable... Jigsaw is our protagonist now

A lot of this movie will be taken up by Insurance Suit navigating the game/extensive flashbacks to him denying Jigsaw the coverage that could have prolonged his life, and then how this destroyed his marriage and sanity and is very bad. not a bad point

and honestly, this makes sense as Jigsaw's final wish. This whole time he's been swearing to have a coherent philosophy and we've seen over time that he really doesn't, and now his last wish is just for revenge.

We now have a journalist character named “Miss Jenkins,” which just REALLY makes it seem like a sixth grader wrote this

"how do we show that this is a flashback?"
"idk make the table glow angelically I guess"

so now we see that Mr. Insurance Suit's game is all about ACTUALLY doing what he does at work all day: he has to decide who lives or dies based on their "ability to live a long and healthy life." But he has to literally kill people instead of letting them die.

now we're flashing back to the events of saw III, which is a delight because scary horror palette clashes with flashback angel glow and flashback glow wins

We are now treated to scene in which Amanda and Hoffman get competitive about who is the best killer/Jigsaw protege and Hoffman LITERALLY shows Amanda his scars and tries to one up her with evidence of the trauma Jigsaw has put him through and Amanda's like feh I've survived more

because subtlety is for french people

and as hoffman and amanda are fighting about who daddy loves most, jill drops in and Jigsaw gives her the key to the box in which he stores the reverse bear trap...so she can use it to kill hoffman later on

the saw series is a story about american families, there I said it

here comes one of my favorite traps in the whole series: Mr. Suit's lawyer has 90 seconds to navigate a maze full of scalding steam, and he can turn a lever labeled "RELIEVE HER" to turn it off, but he will be scalded in the process

you can tell this is the authentic jigsaw's work. a real fan knows the difference.

and THEN we have another saw classic: you rescue person and then they immediately start trying to kill you because jigsaw told them to as part of THEIR game

We have now reached the merry go round trap, where SIX of mr. suit’s workers, who are helping him in the predatory insurance game, are tied to a playground carousel and he can only save two of them. the best part of this is thinking about how Hoffman had to do it BY HIMSELF

the game leads this character through rooms that turn him into more and more of an active murderer, and now he basically has to kill four of the people who have worked for him every day. the goal here is to destroy someone psychologically before you destroy them physically

Saw VI: Canadians Yelling At Each Other

You can tell Hoffman’s real passion is just for straight up killing people with his own big puffy hands

I think Peter Outerbridge is fantastic in the role of Mr. Insurance Suit Man. Saw was such a powerful movie, and such a phenomenon, partly because Cary Elwes was looking for a meaty leading role to sink his teeth into and found it. In both movies we watch a man destroyed

and we've reached the end! WOW that ending is a rush. Basically, in parallel storylines, Peter Outerbridge navigates his awful game and Hoffman is found out by the FBI, kills a room full of feds, and gets kidnapped BY MRS. JIGSAW, who puts the reverse bear trap on him

but at the last second, he escapes!!!! and watching Hoffman RIP his face out of that trap made my body tense and then relax in a way it hasn't all day. Bless you, Saw, once again