By Alicia Parker
By Alicia Parker
Abused, tortured and nauseous is what both the characters in “Saw” and I felt at the end of the movie.
“Saw” was comparable to a session with an evil shrink combined with the gore of a zombie movie.
This psychological thriller really does mess with your head. Unlike other psychological thrillers, “Saw” has a very gritty plot that keeps you on your toes, your mind working at unprecedented rates and your stomach acid on the tip of your tongue.
In the movie, a killer named by the police as “Jigsaw” kidnaps various and almost seemingly random people, sedates them and places them into rooms each with a baneful situation for them to face when they awake.
Jigsaw’s nappings are later justified in the movie by one of his victims that managed to escape. It turns out that all of his victims had serious life problems-such as cheating, drug addiction, self abuse and the universal, lack of appreciation for life-that he was actually trying to, sometimes effectively, cure.
These problems that the victims had, I think, is one of the reasons why the movie attacks one’s emotions so.
Judging from the reaction of the audience, I could tell that many of the viewers could personally identify with some of the characters’ life problems and thus the inevitable “what if” question was raised. What if, something like this could actually happen to me? What if I changed my ways now, can I be saved?
Jigsaw, or “Saw,” received his name because, with each of his victims that he encountered, a piece of their skin was removed in the shape of a small jigsaw puzzle piece. Each piece is used to complete a morbid puzzle and collection of his hobbies.
Victims would wake up in a dark room somewhere with a tape player in their hands with the voice of Saw on it, explaining to them where they were at and what was going to happen.
All of the victims have to choose between pain, suffering and sacrifice or death.
An example of these situations was when a young woman wakes up in a room tied to what looked like an electric chair with a reverse (snaps open, not shut) bear trap around her skull and in her mouth.
The instructions she then heard are that she could either sit and wait her allotted time and allow her jaw and face to be ripped open by the bear trap, or she could work her way out of the chair, go over to her knocked-out boyfriend on the floor, grab the knife next to him, rip his stomach open, search around in his intestines for the key and take the trap off.
A choice between self-sacrifice or the sacrifice of another was common in most of the situations.
Throughout the length of the movie, one particular case of napping and awakening of Saw’s victims is concentrated on, and all events in the movie tied into the major focus. Two men, each chained to separate corners of a filth covered restroom, wake up with envelopes in their pockets with tapes explaining their choices, and various items that were clues to their escape.
One man has the choice of either shooting and killing the other and surviving, or not shooting him and have the two try to find a way out of their chains that bound them to the corners, and out of the room.
Eventually one man found two saws and quickly learns that to free themselves from the chains they will have to saw through their legsfirst.
The outcome of the main situation is very gut-wrenching, face-whitening and shocking.
The end is definitely not something that any of the viewers in the packed theater would have ever expected.
The movie definitely has its own style, the actors are wonderful and the movie is very creative, but I wonder if I should find a way to reverse the emotional abuse I felt I was put through.
This movie definitely came out in time for Halloween, but I am not sure if it is really appropriate for any time of the year.