The October 11 of 13

I have never had any interest in the Saw franchise. The torture/gore films do not appeal to me and I have always connected the Saw franchise to that form of movie.

However, I decided that this movie watch, The October 13, I would give the original Saw a try. I had heard that this was the best of the franchise and did not resemble the gore fests of the sequels that followed it. So I added it to the list.

Who would have thought… I liked this a lot.

For me, the film benefited from its cast because it featured Cary Elwes, whom I loved from The Princess Bride, Danny Glover (whose inclusion surprised me), and two of my favorites from LOST, Ken Leung (who played Miles) and Ben Linus himself, Michael Emerson.

The film also did not include nearly as much gore and torture scenes as I expected. It was there, but it was more psychological torture than anything else. It felt like the graphic scenes all were earned and not just tossed in for a gross-out quota.

Unfortunately, I knew the answer to the twist of the film because I had seen the previews for Saw X which was out this year (and I have not seen) and I knew the actor who was behind Jigsaw. I wished I had not known that because it did affect my viewing of this.

Some of the storytelling aspects of the film was confusing, especially the flashback sequences which kept the narrative from being told in a typical structure. While that is usually a cool feature, this caused more confusion as I was not sure when the events were taking place and in what order we were supposed to put them in. Still, I give director James Wan credit for trying to frame the story in a different manner than other slasher films.

I did not like the ending scene of the film as it felt tacked on or unsatisfying. I found that it really stretched credibility of the film that already required a lot of stretching. Plus, I did not like the way they left everything up in the air and how we really do not know the fate of some of the characters involved.

In the end, I was impressed overall with Saw and I am pleased that I watched it. It was a much better film than I thought it was going to be. However, I do not plan on watching any of the other, universally panned sequels that followed this.