Customer Reviews
The Golden Era of SAW!!! 
2008-09-15
This is where it all began! Adam and Dr. Gordon wake up in a dirty, filthy bathroom with a dead body in the middle. They hear a tape that tells Dr. Gordon to kill Adam by 6:00 a.m., or his wife and daughter will die. Throughout the time in the room, we see flashbacks of Jigsaw's other games, and why Adam and Gordon are in the room. If you love horror, and twists, you'll love SAW!!!
"Saw" is badly overated 
2008-09-12
"Saw" is a badly acted movie with spotty writing and odd direction. The characters aren't believable and the twist at the end is even more unbelievable. Nothing rings true, unless you like gore for gore's sake.
This is not a horror movie in my opinion. It's simply a horror.
A question 2008-09-09
I just finished watching Saw and thought it was a great movie. maybe I need to watch it a second time, but my question is are we to assume Dr. Gordon was killed by saw and Adam never rescued?
I highly recommend the SAW movies 
2008-08-28
Well, for starters I can say it is one of the best franchises ever, not only because the "killer" has a real good motive for "killing" people, and it isn't like most of the genres were the killer is "just insane" and does it just for "fun"...also, no matter how well you think you have figured out the genre you will have a lot of surprises in all the movies of SAW, for me its simply one of the best movies ever and if you have a chance to see the other ones you wont get disappointed, but I have to say that they are more of the "gore genre" than the scary genre... never the less still a great movie franchise. I highly recommend them.
Not so original... 
2008-08-02
It is not exactly true that James Wan et Leigh Whannell have written Saw. They should have mention that they "borrowed" a lot from The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) written by James Whiton et William Goldstein. You will find less blood in the Phibes movies, but a lot more humour (with Robert "the avengers" Fuest as the director, and Vincent Price as the sadistic killer).
Fans of Saw, if you want to know the real origin of this story, watch "The Abominable Dr. Phibes" (1971) and Dr. Phibes Rises Again! (1972).
How much blood would you shed to stay alive? 2008-06-28
Adam (Leigh Whannell) wakes up in a dank room across from Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) and the body of a guy who has blown his own brains out. Not a happy place, obviously, and it gets worse when both men realize that they've been chained and pitted against one another by an unseen but apparently omniscient maniac who's screwing with their psyches as payment for past sins. Director James Wan, who concocted this grimy distraction with screenwriter Whannell, has seen
Seven and any number of other arty existential-psycho-cat-and-mouse thrillers, so he's provided
Saw with a little flash, a little blood, and a lot of ways to distract you from the fact that it doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense. Wan and Whannell (who's not the most accomplished actor, either) pile on the plot twists, which after some initially novel ideas become increasingly juvenile. Elwes works hard but looks embarrassed, and the estimable Danny Glover suffers as the obsessed detective on the case. The denouement will probably surprise you, but it won't get you back the previous 98 minutes.
--Steve Wiecking
'induced nausea' as an artform! inspired brilliance! 2008-06-20
From an admittedly gruesome but purely artistic viewpoint, this first Saw movie is the only 5 star and by far the best film of the series. Sure, the premise is a bit far-fetched and unlikely, but a good movie can ask you to believe the unbelievable, if it's well made. If movies did nothing more than reflect our everyday mundane lives, there would be no reason to escape to the theater to bury ourselves in fantasy. But if that fantasy just so happens to include a little carnage and gratuitous violence to the point of inducing just the tiniest bit of innocent nausea, then grab a barf bag, smile and enjoy it! I'm exaggerating now. I'll spare the synopsis I'm sure you've seen about the two men chained to filthy bathroom pipes with a violent suicide victim between them. Instead, I'll focus on what makes this a brilliant movie. There is an actual premise to this movie, and an actual psychology as well. It's difficult to imagine the main antagonist in this work, Jigsaw, could have the financial or mental (or any other necessary) resources to pull off the stunts in this movie. But to imagine a nearly surrealistic vengeance in such an unlikely form of vigilanteism still holds a fascination for the average viewer with a typically human blood lust. What Jigsaw does to his victims is a vengeance that we all wish at some point that we could take....and as Jigsaw says, "I never kill people, I merely gives them the means by which they either kill themselves or survive." Of course, you should never try any of these stunts at home, kids...but there is a brutal realism, in the human emotions displayed by Jigsaw, and his victims. His dream of 'helping people to appreciate the life that they too often take for granted' is taken too far to the extreme in this movie, and people should never go this far in real life, but in the fantasy of cinema, the sense of victimization of everyone involved is truly felt by the audience, even while watching someone inadvertantly slicing themselves open or hacking off a limb. There is gruesome violence here. There are blatant real emotions, self-preservation and testing of the human spirit in the extreme. As always, this first movie opens and explains a premise, and all subsequent sequels destroy the beauty and carnage of the original...because with the explanations out of the way, parts 2-4 can focus on more special effects, violence and even less plausable violence scenarios. This movie stands alone as a work of art...violent, bloody, grotesque art...but art none the less! Parts 2-4 are good movies and a fun viewing experience, but this first movie keeps the human traps simple, more believable and less complex...leaving the complexities in the thin, flimsy study and testing of the fragile human spirit. Sure, you can break a person emotionally, but if someone's going to kill him or hack off a limb, it's better to let him do it to himself! This is a great movie! An inspired, gruesome work of grotesque art! Make a point to see it, but not if you have to chop off an arm or something!
great movie 2008-05-01
This was a great performence, shocking, thrilling, touture, enjoyment i really enjoyed it. I liked all the saws but part3 was not that good but theothers were, so this was a great movie.
orignal was much better.... 
2008-03-12
I saw this in distribution. I actually had to turn my head at certain points. This, along with Trent Reznor's soundtrack made for a great splatter flick. I thought the uncut version could only be better.....WRONG. It is not nearly as tense and nerve-racking as the theater version. Plus, they have replaced Reznor's soundtrack with something else. In this case, the orginal was much better. Be warned!
Slightly hacked off 2008-03-10
I've managed to miss this one over the last four years. Doesn't deserve four stars in my view. For a film that was obviously made on a reletively low budget it mostly works well though.
The story reminded me of the sort of thing Clive Barker might have written in his Books of Blood (a series of short stories). OK there are a few inconsistencies in the plot but I thought it was pretty well acted and the twist at the end is well done. There are some genuinely creepy, not to mention grisly, moments scattered throughout the film.
However do not be mislead by the hype and the advertising blurb. This isn't a touch on 'Seven', which is better written, acted and in a totally different class. I have watched 'Seven' many many times, but having just finished watching 'Saw' I really have no desire to see it again.
