Bookmonkey Saw: Day 14

Saw IV

Okay, I'm trying to stay away from spoilers, but honestly I can't really talk about this film without giving away a big one.

Sorry.

In Saw III, the Jigsaw Killer is killed - he is very, very dead, and as these films involve human killers rather than monsters, he is not coming back.

But he did have a plan for just that occurrence.

In fact, the overall story of Saw IV really focuses on just how clever the Jigsaw killer was to put together a very complex plan that would be carried out after his death.

Interestingly, later that year (2007) a romance film called P.S. I Love You uses a very similar plot, in which a recently widowed woman finds that her loving husband left behind a complicated set of events aimed to help her in the bereavement process and get her life back on track.

So the fourth film in the series focuses, once again on a victim chosen to be tested by the killer and to either witness, help or prevent the deaths of a bunch of other people.  Taking a quick look at the special features on the DVD, almost all of them revolve around descriptions of how the fatal traps these victims find themselves in would work.

A quick side note on Saw fanfiction - there is a lot (check here).  Considering how lacking the films are in story, most of the fanfiction I looked over is either simple descriptions of torture, or ways in which the narrator are offered the chance to work with the Jigsaw killer as an apprentice (to be fair, the killer is the only fully developed character in the series up to the fourth film), with many adult-themed stories peppered through as well.

In the end, Saw IV (still being filmed in Canada, by the way), is pretty identical to the previous film - there is some play involving flashbacks, but in the end, I can't say whether it is better or worse than Saw II or Saw III.

Bookmonkey Saw: Day 7

Saw II in a nutshell - everything I really liked about the first film seemed absent from the sequel.

Saw II in a slightly longer synopsis - a year after the events of Saw, eight people are trapped in a house and must make horrifying live-or-die-style choices to escape, while a police officer (and the father of one of the eight) captures and questions the jigsaw killer.  Although the film was not well received by critics, it did quite well and therefore another sequel was quickly ordered.

The original movie poster actually drew a bunch of media interest as it was banned by the MPAA - in the original picture (not shown right), it was apparent that the two fingers are severed.  The approved poster (as seen to the right), is therefore quite acceptable to put in the same theatres where kids were going to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire around the same time. (Quick side note, my oldest daughter is equally upset by both the banned and approved posters, entirely due to the ragged fingernails - apparently manicures are not that expensive and even severed fingers deserve a little extra care).

The story was originally written as The Desperate, by Darren Lynn Bousman (who would go on to direct Saw III and IV), but due to it’s inability to get green lit on its own, due to it's violent nature and being considered "...too saw-ish" (1) it was passed over until the sequel to Saw was green-lit and it was found that The Desperate could be adapted into a workable script.

Also I feel it is important to note that Saw II was a Canadian-American Horror film (as were the rest in the series, with Lions Gates Films partnering with the Ontario Production Services Tax Credit) so on behalf of my nation, sorry.

Eight months after the film was released, star Tobin Bell was nominated for an MTV Best Villain award (along with Voldemort from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Scarecrow from Batman Begins, The White Witch from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe) but lost out to Hayden Christensen in Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith for best on-screen villain.

The only thing I really liked about the sequel?  Just as Saw had a bizarre reference to Alice in Wonderland, Saw II does the same with The Wizard of Oz (the 1939 MGM film, not the original novel) when the Jigsaw killer informs his eight victims that “ The Clue to their [escape] can be found Over the Rainbow” 

Internet Movie DataBase. "Trivia" in Saw II.  Retrieved October 7 from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0432348/trivia