You are reading a single comment by @J0nathan and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
-
I only watched it for the first time last year and really enjoyed it. It's not necessarily a "good film" but as an entertaining time capsule it's good fun. I'd put it in the same category as things like Scream and Final Destination for early 2000s silly horror.
-
Cube is also one of the inspirations, perhaps not officially?
But people waking up stuck in an area with lethal traps...well welcome to the Cube.
I thought saw 1&2 were pretty good, after that they series didn't work for me anymore :(
ltc
JWestland
@J0nathan
Just re-watched ‘Saw’.
I remember seeing it at the cinema on the opening night nearly twenty years ago (!) - with an old girlfriend who was nowhere near as into it as I was.
Lord knows how I would have learnt about a film like this in those days. TV advert? Magazine? All I knew was that I had to see it, and I was not disappointed.
Nowadays it would be something that would go straight to Netflix or Amazon - which is what I’m watching it on now (has anyone noticed an annoying micro screen adjusting that Amazon does? Maybe just my TV, but it can be quite irritating).
It’s almost like an The Outer Limits episode, but a very good one.
Yeah, some of the acting and dialogue is off - but a lot of it is brilliant (soft spot for Glover not withstanding), as is the editing, but some of it is also brilliant, especially the transitions between scenes.
Overall the whole concept is brilliant and the commitment to misdirection is - at least to my mind - entirely successful. I did not see much coming and it’s up there in the plot-twist stakes with Usual Suspects. That of course has a rewatch penalty, but that just makes me want to watch it with anyone who hasn’t seen it.
I’ve been trying to put it in the context of the movies that it took inspiration from (Se7en, Silence of the Lambs) and at least one movie took the B movie schlock to an arthouse existential extreme three years after the fact (Funny Games).
It’s not at the film making accomplishment of any of those movies but it’s an excellent and entertaining movie that I’d recommend to anyone.
No idea about the sequels. Think I watched a bit of one, but it was almost immediately Freddy Krugered/Jason Voorheesed.