Saw (2004)

I really, really didn’t enjoy Saw. Perhaps it’s because Triangle was so good, or my age, or the film’s reputation, although this first one is considered by many to be a bit of a horror classic. Two men wake up chained by the ankles to radiators on opposite sides of a locked room. There is a dead man between them with his brains blown out, clutching a tape recorder. Each man has an envelope containing a tape in his pocket, and when they play them, they hear the voice of their captor explaining the rules of the game he demands they play. Gradually they reveal how they came to be in the room, and why the Jigsaw killer might want to teach them a lesson.

Honestly, it’s like a cocaine-addled inverse Seven. The acting is hammy (I know it must be hard to believably play a man who’s just sawn his own foot off, but still), the jumping around through time annoyed me, and the games within games nature of it felt manipulative and weak. Triangle made an incredibly complex plot feel meaningful and emotional, but this just made me feel grubby. Perhaps, as Danny Glover says in another franchise he is part of, I’m getting too old for this shit.