Saw

Here is a movie not to see. Why? Primarily because I'm a guy and guys are emotionally detached and guys don't want to other people to know what gives them watery eyes and an emotional kick in the balls.

Now I'll be the first to admit that I've become more sensitive and that there are a lot of flicks that can move me to tears. This is what I admitted about 'The Road To Perdition'. That movie hit me right in the Daddy Zone. But a horror flick?

Saw is more complicated and more horrible than one could reasonably expect from any movie released around halloween. There is only one reason that I went to see it anyway, which was that 'Ray' was sold out. But there was an off chance that I might, because I do remember choosing a while ago between this and 'The Grudge'. The problem with Saw is that there is very little disbelief one has to suspend in order to watch it. It makes it all the more horrifying that this could indeed happen - of course it could, if a screenwriter can imagine it.

The film opens up with dialog. It's almost a textbook acting school scene. Two men in a room with a dead body between them. They don't know how they got there. And it's off. That premise alone probably would have gotten me to voluntarily see the movie even though I don't do horror. The plot thickens like coagulating blood moving backwards and sideways in time with expertness.

The last horror film I watched was '28 Days After', and I thought it was pretty brilliant, but the conceit of that film is that if you were a fairly reasonable person, you might figure out how to survive. And indeed people do while becoming predictably barbaric. But by putting all the horror into one room, a new dimension of helplessness pervades. It's one thing to die in misery when there is no civilization around, it's completely different to die when it's going on without you.

There are elements of torture in this film that are utterly frightening, and one of the single most heartwrenching scenes I've ever put up with. In 'Passion of the Christ' (which was worse), I knew I was being manipulated for the sake of evangelism. The idea that this sick and twisted crap was on the screen for the sake of entertainment was really getting under my skin. It took me to the edge of coming to my senses and walking the hell out. The problem was, of course, that none of this was over the top. Very little of the live action in the movie was excruciating - instead there were several gruesome backstories that gave you an idea of what an evil genius the manipulator was.

Indeed the 'killer' in this film is not a killer at all per se. He is very much like what we imagine horror directors like to think of themselves. He is that person who controls your thoughts and puts you face to face with grisly circumstances and forces you to contemplate how lucky you are to be alive. Like the mastermind of 'Telephone Booth' the characters in Saw are under the control of an invisible hand. He puts them in a deathtrap and forces them to escape in the worst way.

Like the homicide detective who loves and hates his job, critiquing this film is a dirty chore. At once, I want to admire the handiwork of the artist who has put together this brilliant and horrifying puzzle, and at the same time I shake my head in amazement. How have we come to this? This is what entertains us. I have to tell you, I don't like being emotionally ripped the way this movie did, but if that's what the total movie experience is supposed to be, he did it to me. It hurts. It's truly scary. When I watch spy movies, which I love, I dig the elements of hyper-realism. I like to see the ex-CIA guy go to Mexico and torture the bad guys - because I know I'm never going to be anywhere near that kind of situation. But a man who might kidnap you and put you in a death chamber because he thinks you don't appreciate your life according to his twisted sense of justice? That's the kind of crime that happens all the time, except most of us poor victims don't have the luxury of being caught by a monsterous genius, just by evil idiots.

This film is intellectually satisfying on every level and emotionally distubing on several levels. It's real horror. I have been scared and I don't like it.