Saw (2004)

The Saw franchise began as a single movie simply title Saw that hit theaters in 2004 costing less than $1.2 million to make with a concept that came about due to limited resources available to the creators. As James Wan’s directorial debut the success of Saw is apparent in the numbers, generating roughly $108 million at the worldwide box office with 54% of that being domestic. Originally Wan and Leigh Whannell, the screenplay writer and other story creator, tried to get the film made in Australia, their home country, but instead went to LA with the script. The duo made a short film to help get a producer for the film and by 2003 Evolution Entertainment caused the creation of Twisted Pictures, a horror focused production company.

The distribution of the film was secured by Lions Gate in part due to the positive buzz created by the Saw screening at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. Rather than go straight to video Lions Gate decided to do a Halloween time film release that year. Part of the marketing campaign for the film involved a Red Cross blood drive called “Give Til It Hurts” that collected over 4,000 pints of blood. Following the initial blood drive annual blood drives occurred which by 2023 had resulted in 112.5K lives saved via just under 40,000 pints of blood donated. Koules, one of the Twisted Pictures founders is quoted saying that the they wanted to make something positive out of the association between Saw and blood. The first film garnered buzz in part due to it’s willingness to be brutal and the simplicity of the scenario that becomes more complicated as the film goes on. In addition it reverses a typical timeline by beginning in the middle of the action and informing how things began later on in the plot but not necessarily in chronological order in any traditional sense.

Personal Connection

Personally Saw is a favorite of mine that I credit with getting me hooked on horror rather than just a fan of a couple horror titles. Back in 2004 I didn’t have any adults who either a) thought it was appropriate to watch Saw or b) liked horror enough to take me to see Saw under 17 but I recall our family friends going to see it and raving how freaked out they’d been and how good it was. I didn’t watch it until sometime between 2008-2009 when I was able to find the movie posted onto YouTube in parts. It definitely looked like it’d been filmed on a potato, the audio was wonky, and sometimes parts would be copyright stricken down without suitable alternatives in another language or some other quality compromise for illegal streaming. My perception going in was a blood fest that had little substance, watching more so because everyone talked about it and it was R rated rather than an actual interest in the story.

Spoiler and Content Warning

What I found in Saw was and still is a roller coaster of a thriller that begins shrouded in a mystery within a mystery under the time constraint that we now associate with a Saw trap. The remainder of this post will include spoilers for Saw 2004 but at this point I’m not sure how many don’t know the big surprise at the end or who Jigsaw is now 11 or so movies deep in the franchise. If you have managed to not be spoiled for the first Saw then I highly recommend watching it ASAP for free on Plex then coming back here. Additionally if you want to skip an overview of the movie’s plot that includes some commentary click here to jump to the conclusion of this Saw review that includes spoilers or click here to go to all posts.

Saw Plot Summary

The very first Saw opens underwater with a small light on a keychain floating around until a man, also underwater, suddenly awakes and panics—pulling the drain stop out with his movement that causes the water to be sucked in. The water pulls the keychain right down the drain as the man flails around in the tub in a dark, disgusting, run-down bathroom. This man is actually Leigh Whannell, the writer of the film mentioned earlier in this post who also wrote Insidious and The Conjuring, named Adam. We learn that Adam is a photographer and he’s chained inside of a ruined bathroom with fluorescent lights opposite Dr. Lawrence Gordon portrayed by Cary Elwes. Gordon is also chained in the bathroom and in between the 2 men is a third man who appears to have shot himself in the head, covered in blood and lying face down near the bathroom’s center drain. It appears he’s been there for a short while, the blood still wet and his body not decomposed yet. In this third man’s hand is a cassette player and both Adam and Gordon have cassette tapes in their pockets.

After some initial back and forth exchanging information like names and employment both men display paranoia that the other is somehow more clued in or responsible for the predicament. Both men state that they don’t remember how they got there and cannot think of enemies that might want to trap them that the pair have in common. Adam is able to retrieve the cassette player from the center of the room after some struggle and ingenuity which allows both men to play their tapes one after the other. On Adam’s tape a deep voice taunts him and offers that he could be in the room he dies in. The voice explains that Adam has “lived in the shadows” and spends his time “watching others live out their lives,” calling him a voyeur who he finds apathetic, which the voice states is pathetic. It ends cryptically that Adam can do something about it and essentially participate in the outcome or die.

Unfortunately for the pair Gordon’s tape informs him that he must kill Adam before 6:00 on the clock in the bathroom or his wife and daughter will be killed. Not only this but the taped voice offers “ways to win” the game of killing Adam and suggests that within the room are ways to do this. The voice mentions that an ‘X’ in the room marks the spot for a treasure and warns that failing the game will also result in him being left in the room to die and eventually rot away. A heart on the toilet prompts Gordon to pressure Adam to stick his hand in the rotting sewage in the toilet bowl, which he reluctantly does only to discover a bag inside the back tank. Inside this garbage bag is 2 rusty hacksaws and Adam immediately starts sawing at his chain until Gordon interrupts to ask for the other saw to be tossed to him. Adam uses that opportunity to toss what is left in bag inside of the tub he woke up in without Gordon seeing as he’s distracted by picking up his own saw and beginning to work on his chain across the room.

Adam’s saw breaks and in frustration he throws it as a mirror, knocking a shard loose as Gordon realizes the rusty saw is useless against the new chains of the leg restraints. He realizes that the saws aren’t meant to cut through chains but rather to cut through their feet—which is a massive leap on first utterance until he explains he may know who trapped them there. He theorizes they are being held by a killer known as Jigsaw that traps his victims and forces them to complete what he calls games in order to survive. It’s revealed that about 5 months before he was interrogated by 2 detectives ( portrayed by Danny Glover and Ken Leung) who inform him one of his penlights was found at the scene of a suspected Jigsaw murder. Despite having an alibi that cleared him he agreed to help the detectives by viewing testimony of the 1 surviving Jigsaw victim, a reformed heroin addict named Amanda Young portrayed by Shawnee Smith. They managed to find Jigsaw’s warehouse using Amanda’s tape and they almost apprehended the killer except Glover’s character had his throat slashed and Leung’s character is killed by a shotgun blast sprung from a trap. All of this is revealed via Gordon’s telling of events that might have helped lead to their entrapment by Jigsaw.

It’s revealed that Gordon’s wife and daughter are being held captive who is watching Adam and Gordon via hidden camera broadcasting to a TV. Additionally Glover is watching the house, obsessed with the case which resulted in him losing his job with the police force. Reeling still from Leung, his partner’s, death he is determined to solve the Jigsaw murders and catch the serial killer once and for all. Now caught up to speed with other characters through the present Gordon and Adam are the focus again, Gordon finding 2 cigarettes in his pocket, a lighter, and a one way phone and Adam asks for a cigarette. Both men then tell each other about their abductions, Adam’s taking place after seeing the infamous Jigsaw puppet in his photography darkroom and Gordon’s in a parking garage by someone in a hideous pig mask.

Suddenly Gordon’s wife calls on the phone, being held at gunpoint by her captor. She warns that Adam shouldn’t be trusted because Glover’s character, Tapp, paid Adam to spy on Gordon for him. Due to having visited a medical student he was sleeping with the night of his abduction he believes that is why Jigsaw is testing him. Adam then finds a photo of the man shown as holding Gordon’s family hostage and Gordon identifies him as an orderly at his hospital. Since Gordon hasn’t killed Adam yet he goes to kill Gordon’s family but his wife stops him and the 2 get into a struggle. Seeing this from outside Tapp then rushes in to save Gordon’s family and then chase the orderly into the sewers. Tapp is then shot in the chest during a struggle with the orderly and Gordon is shown having heard the gunshots and screaming via the phone that was still on the call.

Gordon in a panic saws his foot off then, completely snapped by what he’s heard over the phone. He picks up the gun in the third man’s hand and shoots Adam just as the orderly enters the room seeking to kill Gordon. Adam survived the gunshots however and uses the top of the toilet tank to smash the orderly’s head, killing him. A now freed Gordon is crawling out of the room in an attempt to find help, bleeding out. Adam searches the orderly’s body in hopes that he has a key, believing him to be the Jigsaw killer that they have defeated. Unfortunately he only finds another tape, indicating that the orderly is another victim of Jigsaw rather than him. The orderly that abducted Gordon’s wife and daughter is in his own game, hoping to be given an antidote to a slow acting poison if he does Jigsaw’s bidding.

At this point it is time for the biggest reveal of the movie and probably the franchise: the third man, the body that has been lying in the center of the room, isn’t a body at all. The body rises, a man who is very much alive who reaches up and pulls off a bald cap that is the gunshot “wound” and is actually perfectly fine aside from needing a stretch. The man who’s been lying in the center of the room is Jigsaw, who is actually John Kramer portrayed by Tobin Bell, a patient of Gordon’s who has a fatal cancer diagnosis. Kramer reveals to Adam that the key to his chain went down the drain in the start of the film and Adam tries to shoot him—cause that is just insane that he put that much of Adam’s fate to chance and an almost certainty that the plug would be pulled in Adam’s frantic wakening. Adam is shocked through his chain when Kramer pushes a remote button, revealing he always had the fail safe right there. He then walks out of the room and shuts the door leaving Adam in the dark, alone, and guaranteed to die there.

Conclusion

From the opening of the movie with the light on a chain swirling down the tub drain I became hooked, asking, “what could that mean?,” while wondering what that could have to do with anything. Prior to watching I hadn’t heard talk about the story, despite all of the little pieces of information and clues connected so fluidly in such a shocking way at the end. I’d heard he sawed his foot off and that had been the gruesome, out of pocket draw of horror at the time—long before Terrifier made the standard far crazier.  Every detail seemed to be crafted without the viewer even knowing that something was afoot but making you feel like you’d solved a mystery at the end. I loved the revenge aspect of it and overall I felt that it addressed something that quickly became a huge political talking point: the American healthcare system. During my first watching of course I didn’t connect those dots but throughout my many rewatches I, along with many other viewers, saw something much bigger.

Here we have the antagonist, Jigsaw, abducting people he feels have either wronged him during his battle with terminal cancer or who do not respect their gift of life and placing them in traps which they will either sacrifice to free themselves from or succumb to. Granted, I am not blind to the pretentious notion that Jigsaw has any right to determine who does and does not deserve to live. As an adult I find it absurd and mentally unsound that he bestowed God-like powers upon himself but I do however take into account that he had a brain tumor that could have greatly affected his cognitive state. Nonetheless, his standards are extremely low for what qualifies a person to be in his traps. If it was other serial killers or abusers maybe but to enact such harsh punishments on people because they do drugs or are apathetic in life feels really wild.

I think that the intention is that Jigsaw is not relatable or a “good” guy despite many fan analyses done on his methodology and criteria for his murders and traps. The best part of not only Saw 2004 but every Saw installment happens right towards the end when  the infamous music builds up in the background over the story reveals. This is the scene where all of the pieces come together and the intricacies of Jigsaw’s preplanning are exposed, like a game of “did you notice this?,” that reveals the true chronological order of events, characters true intentions, and character connections alike.

Pertaining to Saw 2004 Jigsaw’s ability to stay completely still on a hard, cold tile floor is absolutely insane, that he managed to lie in the middle of that nasty room that long only to reveal himself at the very end is a testament to his crazy. This big reveal was so insane that big reveals and twists became a hallmark in any Saw franchise installment, making the twists wilder and bigger as the movies went on. I always recommend anyone who hasn’t seen the Saw movies to at the very least sit down and watch the first and second. The first is just a good movie that builds tension well while keeping your interest in the mystery and then the 2nd somehow manages to be even better than the first and takes things to a larger scale. If you’re really digging those I’d say take a gamble on watching through Saw V 2008 because after that time period in the franchise things kind of fall apart but an opinion piece on the series as a whole is for another time.