There is a movie franchise that I have been working through since it came out in 2004: The Saw franchise.
I know many people are not fans of this movie, and I fully understand why. They're twisted, sick and just plain fucked.
However, I had seen the first five and I couldn't just stop there! I had to finish the series!
I finally watched the sixth one a week ago and the seventh one last night. I am so relieved to have finished because this series is so fucked up.
Let me just tell you though, I LOVED the ending. Like the VERY end, because the last ten minutes are SO frustrating.
So basically I'm going to recap the basic storyline, trying my best to not involve too much detail.
Here we go.
First, the main storyline is that Jigsaw, tests his victims with "games" trying to renew their instinct to survive and appreciate their lives. He states time and time again that he has never killed a human being; he allows his victims to choose whether they live or die. It is up to them. Sick, I know.
Saw
This is the start. The main points of the story focus on Dr Lawrence Gordon, a busy, self-centred, supposedly cheating doctor. He is trapped in a bathroom with a guy name Adam, who you find out has been following Dr. Gordon and taking pictures of him, proving that he is cheating on his wife. Both men have chains around their ankles, strapped to pipes bolted into the walls. The point of the game (and I only call it a game because that is what Jigsaw refers to them as in the movies) is to saw off their foot in order to escape the chains, and they must do so in a certain amount of time (I think it was by like 6pm or something), or else they will be trapped inside the bathroom and Dr. Gordon's wife and child will be killed.
Anyway, Dr. Gordon eventually saws off his foot while Adam watches, sickened. At the end, Dr. Gordon gets out, and the audience has no idea what happens to him. A man that has been lying the middle of the bathroom the whole movie, apparently shot in the head and lying in a pool of blood, then gets up when the time is up and informs Adam that there had been a key in the bathtub that Adam had been lying in when he awoke in the bathroom. Naturally they key had gone down the drain with the bath water.
Okay, now after writing all that, I have realized this blog will take me an entire day to write if I say everything I want to say, so for the rest of the movies, if you really want all the info, look it up on Wikipedia yourself! For the rest of the movies, I swear I'm only going to give the gist.
Saw II
This movie is centered around 6 strangers in a house that are constantly inhaling a neurotoxin and must find their way out in a certain amount of time or find an antidote to the toxin, otherwise they will die. Donnie Wahlberg plays a hot-headed, dirty detective who plants evidence to gain convictions and the audience meets John, the man who the media has labelled Jigsaw. He is aware that his son is in the house trap and his test is to remain calm and he will be given his son eventually. He doesn't pass the test though. He beats the shit out of Jigsaw and the audience finds out the house had been on a scheduled recording, that everyone was already dead, save for Matthews' son who had been safe the whole time Matthews had been with Jigsaw.
Amanda, who was a victim in the first movie is in the house and you find out she is Jigsaw's accomplice before she locks Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) in the bathroom from the first movie.
Saw III
A man must learn to forgive, after his beloved son was killed in a drunk-driving accident. He must forgive the judge who let the drunk-driver go, the driver and a witness or two. Meanwhile, a woman who later turns out to be the man's wife is forced into helping Amanda take care of John in his state of suffering due to cancer.
In the end, the man is not able to forgive John, who he kills, and also kills Amanda, inevitably killing his wife as well. He then finds out his little girl is being kept somewhere and with John dead, he will never know where.
Saw IV
Centered around a cop who has been involved in the Jigsaw killings since the beginning. With Eric Matthews missing and several more of his colleagues victims of Jigsaw related incidents, he must go through the games Jigsaw set up for him, with the challenge of not saving anyone.
He fails, showing up to save Eric Matthews and Detective Hoffman before time runs out, so because he tried to save them, he dies, as does Eric Matthews and we find out that Detective Hoffman is Jigsaw's "disciple", to continue the sick man's work.
Back story into John's life, his wife Jill had been pregnant, much to his joy, but she miscarried due to an accident at the addiction centre where she works. Jigsaw puts the man who caused the accident through his first ever game and thus creates the idea for the Jigsaw phenomenon. Jill, upon finding out about John's sick tortures, leaves him, not being able to handle his new forms of recreation.
Saw V
Peter Straum, an agent working on the Jigsaw murders finds out that Detective Hoffman is Jigsaw's accomplice and is thus targeted for the rest of the movie.
The main story for this movie is the 5 individuals who are supposed to go through a series of games, meant to challenge their instincts. One person dies in each game, with two people making it to the final game. They realize that all five were supposed to make it to the final game, making for a more difficult challenge for only two people at the end (In case you're wondering, the five were meant to put their arms in five slots with rotating saws, to fill up a beaker with 10 pints of blood. However, with only two of them, they must saw halfway up their arms, filling up the beaker with half the blood in their body).
In the end, Detective Hoffman kills Peter Straum, the only living person that we think knows about Hoffman's true identity.
Saw VI
The main pawn in this movie's game is a life insurance VP (or something of that nature) who essentially chooses which appilcants get accepted or rejected (in Jigsaw's opinion, that means he decides who lives or dies).
He must go through his series of games, deciding who to save, who's life has more value. He gets to the end, to find himself locked in a cage between his wife or girlfriend or whatever, and the wife and son of an applicant who was rejected by his firm and died. The mother and son get to decide whether this man lives or dies, whether to forgive him or not. The wife ultimately decides that she could have forgiven him for her husband, but she couldn't save him for fear that he would get back out and tear more families apart. So her and her son kill him.
Meanwhile, Detective Hoffman kills all the people who know about him again. The police department analyze a tape from one of the Jigsaw murders and they find out it is Detective Hoffman's voice. He then proceeds to slit everyone's throats/stab/shoot. And the movie ends with Hoffman anonymous again.
But wait: one bit of info I forgot to mention in the last movie and this one: the importance of Jill Tuck, Jigsaw's widow. He leaves her a box in his will, which you find out has picture of people in current games, which she is directed to give to Hoffman, save for one: A picture of Hoffman himself. Jill is told to kill Hoffman. Except that Hoffman gets out of the gruesome head gear designed to snap his jaw open. So Hoffman lives, with no one but Jill Tuck knowing of his identity.
Saw 3D (the Final Chapter)
Jill Tuck tells Matt Gibson, a detective in the police department that Hoffman is Jigsaw's accomplice. Hoffman then spends the whole movie attempting to find Jill and kill her.
The other plot surrounds a man who has become a celebrity due to his book outlining the experience of his Jigsaw game. We find out he is a huge liar, that he has never been a victim of Jigsaw and only wished to make money and gain fame from the highly publicized murders.
Side note, he holds a group meeting of Jigsaw survivors to discuss their experiences and we find survivors of previous Jigsaw games that we had not known about, such as Dr. Gordon, who now has a fake leg at the ankle, a girl who had chopped off her arm in the sixth movie and one of the individuals who had split his arm in half to fill the beaker with blood in the fifth movie.
The liar must try to save his friends (he is not able save any of them) in order to save his wife, who has no idea that he lied about the whole Jigsaw experience. He fails though. He is put through the test he had lied about (stabbing hooks through his pectorals and hoisting himself up on a chain) but he doesn't save his wife, who is roasted to death.
After everyone finds out who Hoffman is and where he is, he once again KILLS EVERYONE, like literally EVERYONE this time who knows about him. He even kills Jill Tuck.
So just when you think the movie is over and you're asking "WTF?!", Hoffman steps out into the parking lot and is attacked by multiple people in the traditional pig mask used to kidnapp Jigsaw victims. The one main attacker who had tranquilized Hoffman takes off his mask and it's DR GORDON from the first movie! I couldn't believe it!
I was so happy with this ending. In a weird way, Dr Gordon is the hero in a sense. Not really though, as we find out he helped with serveral Jigsaw tests. We also find out that he was directed by Jigsaw to kill Hoffman if anything ever happened to Jill.
So the movie ends with Hoffman chained to the pipe in the original bathroom from the first movie, when Dr Gordon walks in and throws the saw meant to save Hoffman into the hallway outside the bathroom.
So Hoffman is left in the bathroom to rot to death and Dr Gordon saves the day. Kinda.
So there you have it. The Saw movies, granted I left A LOT of info out, but if you want to know the whole story, watch the movies.
If you're as fucked up as I am apparently, you won't be able to stop after the first one.
As the line in the movie goes, Game Over.
