Saw (2004) KILL COUNT

Welcome to the death

count

. Where we

count

the victims of all our favorite horror movies. I'm James A. Janisse and today we're going to watch Saw. A low-budget, high-impact film released in

2004

. Directed by James Wan and written by Leigh Whannell, Saw is one of the most influential horror films ever made, injecting life and brutality into a genre that had become stagnant with Scream knockoffs. aimed at teenagers. It was so successful that it would spawn six sequels released annually for the rest of the decade with an eighth film, Jigsaw (2017), hitting theaters last year and a ninth film all but confirmed at this point.

Saw's reputation continues. Although often considered mindless torture porn, this first film is no more graphic than your typical trashy slasher film. Sure, the sequels would get increasingly bloodier, but the original Saw was more about the mystery of the Jigsaw Killer and, of course, the traps that force his victims to make difficult decisions if they want to make it out alive. The original also sets up the twisting narrative and flashbacks within flashbacks that would give this series one of the most intricate stories in all of horror. For the next eight weeks, I'll be guiding hardcore fans and the uninitiated through all of this madness, but right now.

Let's start at the beginning and get to the murders. The movie starts with a blue light surrounded by darkness, the lights are attached to something floating in a tub of water and when this guy wakes up in it, the light goes straight down the drain. We'll learn later how much that sucks. Bathtub Boy shouts in confusion in the dark and is greeted by a very hoarse voice. Bathroom Boy: LIGHTS ON! Deep voice: What if I could? When the lights come on, they blind this guy like it's 3:00 in the morning and he has to get up and pee.

He is in a bathroom and in front of him is the gentleman with a deep voice. Among them is a body lying in a large pool of blood from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. In one hand, the gun, in the other a tape recorder and the two living men find their ankles chained to the bathroom pipes. Many of us have seen this movie thousands of times, but I always try to remember that this setup is instantly intriguing and probably also helps start the escape room craze that I love so much. Our bathtub boy is Adam, played by Leigh Whannell.

Damn, can this guy write and act? Man with deep voice: What is your name? Adam: My NAME is "So Fucking Confused." WHAT IS YOUR NAME? Well, at least he knows how to write. James: The other guy is Cary Elwes, who tries VERY hard to hide his English accent. The name of his character? Dr. Lawrence Gordon: The name is Lawrence Gordon. I am a doctor. He's a doctor. James: And he ALSO just woke up in this place. Neither of them remembers getting there. Adam: I went to bed in my shitty apartment and woke up in REAL SHIT!

James: And this place IS shit. There's shit all over the walls. THERE'S SHIT EVERYWHERE! Gordon notices that the wall clock isn't covered in shit. That's why it must be new and placed there for a purpose. As a purpose that tells time. In his pants, Adam finds an envelope with his name on it. And inside there is a very insistent tape. We'll touch you when we have time, Tape. Gordon's pants house another self-promotional tape, but with an additional vignette. Oh shit! Is there a key there too? But as escape room fans in the US might have guessed, the key doesn't work in any of the locks they have right now.

That recorder would surely come in handy, though, and thanks to the power of plaid and a bathtub chain, Adam is able to reach the corpse and retrieve the dead media device. The tape he plays gives the world its first listen to Jigsaw. Puzzle: Rise and Shine Adam. You're probably wondering where are you? Jigsaw: I'll tell you where you could be. You could be in the room where you die. James: The tape calls Adam a voyeur and says, "You now have the opportunity to act instead of just watching." Quite cryptic and DEFINITELY NOT the film you would want to take to a desert island.

Hoping to hear a better Bop, Gordon throws the tape of it to Adam. DJ Tub Boy plays that track and the tape gives Gordon some instructions. Jigsaw: Your goal in this game... Jigsaw: Is to

kill

Adam. Jigsaw: You have until "six" on the clock to do it. James: It also reveals a lot of other information, like how the guy in the room shot himself because he was super poisoned. That "X" marks the location of the treasure. And that if he doesn't

kill

Adam by 6:00, Gordon's wife and daughter will die and he will be left to rot in this room.

Puzzle: Let the game begin. James: Oh... Could we do Catan instead of him? A closer listen reveals a very faint whisper that says "Follow your heart." And it looks like there's a shitty heart painted on that shitty toilet. Adam holds his nose and fishes inside the container, but he finds nothing. He then checks the tank like what any reasonable person would have done first. He finds a plastic bag with two hacksaws inside. And maybe that's it. Or maybe Adam is discreetly tossing the bag aside for a specific reason. When the saws do nothing against his chains, Adam throws his own in anger.

From which comes a piece of shit covered in mirror. It seems those saws prefer the taste of meat. Dr. Gordon: He doesn't want us to break our chains. Dr. Gordon: He wants us to cut off our feet. James: That's what I'm saying, Gordie (Transcriber's Note: WTF?) Gordon says he knows who's doing this to them. And we launch into our first flashback of the series. Prepare for confusing time jumps, because this franchise plays with chronology as much as damn Lost does. Oh, speaking of Lost, one of the detectives on the case is Steven Sing played by Ken Leung.

His partner is David Tapp, played by Danny Glover, (From the Lethal Weapon movies) and they found a corpse hanging from barbed wire. Detective Alison Carey, Dina Meyer from Starship Troopers, tells you how this guy died a really tough death crawling around in this mess. And that they found a tape at the scene. Puzzle: Hello Paul. You are perfectly healthy, sane. middle class, male. Jigsaw: However, last month, you ran a razor across your wrist. James: See? Now here's our first look at Jigsaw's mindset. Paul, a middle-class man, was apparently cutting himself. And instead of asking sympathetically "What's wrong?", Jigsaw puts him in a room full of barbed wire and tells him that if he wants to live he has to escape before the door closes at 3:00. .

We see Paul's death as he tries to win the Jigsaw game in a scene edited like an industrial metal music video. He seems a little silly now. But it was the creative solution to the film's low budget and lack of coverage. So I won't hate. Paul's body is missing a piece of meat cut into the shape of a puzzle piece and hence the name of our condescending murderer. Gordon: Actually, technically speaking, he's not really a murderer. Yuck. This shit. James: There is sometimes the idea that Jigsaw is not technically a murderer, since he simply finds ways for his victims to commit suicide.

Hey, puzzle, maybe ask Charlie Manson how that shit holds up in court. Oh wait, you can't. HE DIED IN PRISON! I don't know, fraudulently using a handicapped parking sticker or something, I poisoned him and put the antidote inside a safe whose combination is written on the walls somewhere between all these numbers. But wait, there's also tons of glass on the floor, but wait again. He smeared himself with flammable gelatin so that the candle he is using to light his path could turn fatal and he does. Mark gets immolated after trying to beat this damn impossible game, but you know that technically the puzzle didn't kill him, the trap.

Yeah? Well, who threw it in the trash? Jigsaw did Carry points to a peephole and says that Jigsaw likes to have a front row seat to his own games. He also finds a flashlight at the scene that belongs to dr. Gordon remember we're still in a flashback and in it Gordon is talking about a patient with an inoperable tumor and he keeps calling the guy a patient, which I think is pretty standard. But someone is not a fan of that clinical speech, his name is John dr. Gordon Hey Speaking of lost, Michael Emerson plays Zepp and orderly at the hospital and says that patient John is actually a very interesting person.

Gordon's lesson is interrupted by the school principal who calls him into the office and as he drops off one of his students, Lear approaches him. with some serious "Fuck Me" eyes, Tap and Singh are waiting for him to return the pen light and take him to the station, but Gordon is acquitted after he reluctantly gives them an alibi we can't yet hear. It must have been something embarrassing. like a bad night of diarrhea for some reason Singh has Gordon's cane nearby to eavesdrop on a surviving puzzle victim Telling his story what the heck of sloppy police work Is that Singh his privacy rights are being violated in every way the survivor Amanda Who Could I Want to Remember in the Future relays her story in a flashback Filled with more music video-style editing, she woke up in a room with the series' most infamous trap fixed around her hat.

A bear trap in reverse, as Billy the puppet explained to her in his appearance at the premiere Hi Amanda, I want to play a game, the devices are hooked to their upper and lower jaws and when time runs out, how does this happen Ho, that Poor wighead, the key to unlock the device is in the stomach of Amanda's supposedly dead cellmate, but then Ella gets up from her chair and starts the stopwatch. It becomes clear that the guy on the ground next to her is not really dead, but rather very much alive. Amanda came here to win, so she puts it all on the field and grabs.

The knife provided to open this guy's stomach like a pumpkin, she stabs him a bunch of times, tearing his insides and searching through her insides to find his stomach that has the key inside it, she manages to get the trap. just before her head turns into Styrofoam dust and Billy's victory parade and her trademark red tricycle comes out of the shadows to congratulate her. Most people are very ungrateful for being alive, but not you anymore. Good job Amanda, you won. gratitude Tap mentions that she was a drug addict, which again was a pretty harsh rehab treatment, but I guess it worked in her case.

He helped me. Back in the shitty bathroom, Adam discovers that the glass mirror that broke is in the way and when he runs away. the remaining glass they find a camera in the medicine cabinet without any of the boys in the bathroom knowing. On the other side of the camera there is someone looking at them with a mocking voice. I can see you. Gordon talks about his family for a while and tosses his wallet to Adam. He can see a photo of the Gordon clan, but inside the wallet is a photo you probably don't want to send with your Christmas cards.

On the back of this terrifying terrorist image is a reminder that the x marks the spot, but with an additional image. clue that says that sometimes you see more with your eyes closed, that doesn't make sense. Adam does not divulge this information to the doctor and instead keeps the scary photo to himself. Another flashback takes us to the last time Gordon saw his family after his daughter Diana. He woke up his wife Alison to tell her there was a bad man in his room. Gordon helped Diana back to bed by playing the leppy boy's favorite game, this piggy, but right in the middle of wee wee wee he is interrupted by the sound of her searching.

On his way to answering the call, he gets into an argument with Alison in her weird fucking living room. What is that curtain? Do you have a little stage back there? Maybe they should use it to play out this marital drama they've been having since their relationship is obviously on the ropes. Gordon leaves and back in Diana's room he sees an eye peeking out of her closet, her scream brings Alison into the room to find a G-g-g-g-g-ghost no. It's not a ghost. He's just a mean son of a bitch who holds the Gordon family hostage in his own house and plays a sick game in which he listens to Diana's heartbeat.

He rises as he points a gun at his mother's head. Spectators look at the top. From the painting we see that this bastard is Zepp The Orderly. Is Zepp a puzzle? I don't know how Zepp saw all the looks out the window, he spied on someone through a camera. It's Detective Tapp working in a room with madness on the walls and growling about Gordon. Never let you go. Attention, This is now the present. But you'd be forgiven if you didn't know, since these Flashbacks forget to announce themselves half the time, so maybe try to help with the confusion.

The film has a one-minute recap montage. But you're not even halfway there. It's over, Saw! This type of hand grip will be helpfullater, when the story goes crazy. But we go. We just saw all this shit, at least the montage gives us this fucking crazy transition where a car drives in front of a remorseful looking Danny Glover? What the fuck is that, oh yeah? And now we're back in the past when Tapp let Gordon go after they all shared popcorn watching Amanda's messy testimony, it must be tormenting Tapp as he goes straight back to the station and watches the puzzle tape again. and again as if it were his. favorite YouTube channel You're just helping to generate advertising revenue.

Play your obsessive Look again is worth it. However, he hears a fire alarm in the background and notices a gang symbol on a wall. He in Singh checks which fire alarms were activated within the gang territory and that's it. They head to an abandoned warehouse to get a jigsaw, without worrying about a court order or any backup. Nothing could go wrong. Here, inside the warehouse, they find an open-plan office that almost doubles as a base of operations and a manufacturing center. Oh, he looks at his shoebox diorama cube. He'll definitely get an A on that. He'll probably pass this kidnapping quiz too because they find a guy there under a red blanket, tied up and caught in a trap.

Trapped? when they hear the elevator going up, the griffin wants to hide and pretend they're not there to see what the puzzle does or something, it doesn't make any sense just so the guy in the elevator can rest, but instead they look From the puzzle-like shadows and elegant black and red robes they control their captive and say arrogant nonsense, don't cry, I have given you a life, a purpose, the detectives leave, but having left the high ground, Jigsaw was able to kick. -Start the trap and frustrate them by saying that the key to unlock it is in this giant ringing puzzle.

Sick while trying to arrest him and puzzle like yes I'm sick of your attitude. It's a joke. He is actually sick with cancer. Singh finally sees some sense and shoots the trap to pieces. But that's when Jigsaw uses a blade hidden up his sleeve to slit Tapps' throat and flee. Singh chases the puzzle and even manages to shoot him in this dirty one. , hallway, good shot Singh But don't forget that puzzle is a silly man. By which I mean booby traps because when Singh goes through some cobwebs, he trips over a wire connected to a bunch of ceiling-mounted shotguns that fire and blow his head off like a lot of blood in this movie.

It's not very explicit, but it's still a cool death, plus it's finally the death of a character we really care about. Jigsaw gets up and leaves him a little worse for wear just as Tapp arrives to see Singh dead and being photographed. Screaming in anguish. It wasn't actually photographed with the weird editing that surely makes this movie a little confusing, so damn messy nowadays. Tapp rasps from his now-healed throat wound as he reminds us that he is watching Zeb. Who's still watching Gordon and Adam? Oh yeah, Gordon and Adam, can we go back to those bathroom guys and move the story forward instead of back?

Thanks Adam. He finally decides to act on that photo clue and tells Gordon to turn off the lights, which reveals an X on the wall. It didn't appear before because the glow-in-the-dark paint hadn't loaded yet. Gordon checked the Xbox to find a locked box and once again us escape room professionals eagerly raised our hands to say Hello, the key from before. I should open that bad boy. And what it does is that inside is a cell phone, a couple of cigarettes, and a secret note to Gordon saying that the cigarettes aren't necessarily poisoned. At least not yet, Gordon tries the phone.

But it doesn't work because it's only meant to receive calls and Damn what another flashback? Ok, sure we're in a parking lot in a scene that seems so operatic for some reason when Gordon doesn't notice a camera flash in his face, he also doesn't notice this big-headed person in a red plaid robe crawling around the ground towards him, the pig's head. he rushes over and jumps galore to take us back to the shitty room where Gordon is asking how Adam knew to turn off the lights. After some questioning, Adam reveals the wallet photo to Gordon, who, so scared, can't help but scream in rage.

What are you doing to them, you bastard? This kind of desperation could drive a man to murder and Gordon looks at the blood from the toilet body on the floor and the cigarette then puts all the pieces of the puzzle together, dips the cigarette in the very poisonous blood while Adam doesn't look But then He turns off the lights and whispers something to Adam that neither Zep nor the audience can hear when the lights come back on. They put on a little skit where Gordon offers Adam a cigarette, but he gives him the break and a cigarette.

Instead, Adam smokes in hiding and gives a very poor performance of a man being poisoned to death so unconvincing that he is interrupted in the form of a shock through the ankle chain that causes him to break a phase. Good plan though Gordie, the download apparently some memory returned to Adam's brain. Now I remember everything. Make another queue. flashback where Adam arrives at his shitty apartment and enters his house, a dark room to reveal images of wait for it, Dr. Lawrence, fucking Gordon, later after a nap in the dark room, Adam wakes up to find that all the lights in his apartment are off, leading to Perhaps the most well-constructed scene in the film.

Adam wanders around the dark apartment intermittently using his camera's flash to get snapshots of visibility. It's nice and creepy, especially when this breaks the silence. That laugh belongs to Bill E Puppet who simply rests on a lazy boy Adam. He gives Billie a bat and beats that puppet! He should probably be more worried about the pig's head in the closet. And that's how Adam ended up in the shitty room. Gordon receives a call on his cell phone from his tearful daughter saying, "Oh, you fucked up." I didn't get that bad man out of my room. Alison appears. she takes the next line and tells Gordon that Adam lied to her and knows him.

But then the line goes dead. Gordon demands to know who Adam is and responds by sounding like a really guilty kid. You know who I am, that line delivers the scariest thing in The Movie so far, in response to being called a liar, Adam throws it back at Gordon and tells him no, and we return to that soap opera parking lot where we see that Adam is responsible from the previous scene. Cool flash? Then we see what else was in that plastic bag from the toilet tank. Adams' photos of Gordon that he's been collecting for days since he gets paid to track down rich guys who have affairs like the one Gordon Almost had with that thirsty grad student in a seedy hotel. room.

That's right, I said almost from the moment you stop him before anything happens, when he leaves, he's like, Oh my God, he's back in that parking lot for the third time in about 10 minutes. Yes. I saw that we know that there is a camera flash. Gordon questions Adam about who he paid him to drink. Photos and it turns out to be none other than Detective David Tapp. Damn Tapp, aren't you getting too old for this shit? Gordon tells Adam all about Tapp and another montage of Cary Elwes slipping into his English accent when he says the word murders.

He convinced himself that he must have somehow been involved in the murders. Ha ha. That's fun, we're having fun here guys. Adam sees a photo he didn't take and shows it to Gordon, who recognizes the person looking out a dirty old window. He's a Zepp in that photo. Y'all, Gordon starts yelling about how he's going to blow up that little pipsqueak, but time is running out, Gordo. It's six o'clock and it seems to me that Adam is still alive. Fortunately, Alison is able to discreetly escape from her bonds before Zepp comes in to kill her and when he calls and gets up to tell him the bad news, Alison fights back and fights with Zepp for his gun, some shots are fired, alerting Tapp to the across the street that shit is happening and Alison subdues Zepp with a leg scissors.

Tapp breaks into the apartment and gets into a shootout with Zepp during which Alison and Diana escape the house and the series Zepp breaks a vase over Tapp's head and runs off saying he has to go run some errands and kill the Dr. Gordon Tapp recovers and pursues him in the worst car chase ever. What I've ever seen in a movie is crazy edited shots of the two of them driving wow. This is really bad. Gordon doesn't realize that his family ran away because all he hears is OK. Corral comes down the phone, so to escape and save them, he ties a tourniquet around his leg and prepares to make this movie his name.

While there are a couple of shots of him cutting off his ankle, most of the amputation is left to the imagination. And they shone through shots of a horrified Adam and a crazed doctor. Gordon. We don't even see the final result. We only know he's done when he throws the saw aside while Tapp chases Zepp into some tunnels and manages to put him against the wall, but Zepp escapes by sneaking away and shooting Tapp, trapping him in the chest. and surprisingly killing him, this really is the end for Detective Tabb, who falls to the ground dead, as expected, Danny Glover would be one of the few actors in the series who never returned even for a flashback.

Lawrence crawls over to the body in the bathroom. and he takes his gun, which he carries with Chekhov's bullet from the beginning of the film. He is pale as a ghost as he tells Adam, apologetically, that he has to do what he has to do, you have to die. No, I want to live, I want to live! I'm sorry. He shoots his bathroom buddy on the floor and yells let's go. He did it, he let it go now, but when Zepp shows up at the party. He tells Gordon. It's too late. According to the rules, he goes to shoot Gordon, but Adam, still alive, trips him and realizes that fists are too good for the zeppy boy, so he grabs the lid of the toilet tank and hits Gordon's head.

Zepp into a bloody pulp. once again Not so explicit is all that is shown through low angle shots of Adam, but Leigh Whannell sells it and the killing spree ends well with the tank lid shattering. Gordon crawls over to Adam and tries to offer him some comfort. I have to go get help. Yes, if I'm Adam, I'm not convinced. This is going to work. This punch to the zombie who looks like a one-footed bastard is supposed to be his salvation. Color me skeptical or Color me cynical. I don't mind. Just cover me up so I don't look like this dr.

Gordon ghoul leaves promising to bring someone to help him, but Adam wisely begins to seek his own rescue from him in the form of a key in Zepp's body. Instead, he finds a tape player that reveals that Zepp is not the evil mastermind of this movie. He's just been a pawn this whole time. Hello Mr. Hindle or as they called him in the hospital, Zepp. The tape reveals that the depth was poisoned by a puzzle and can only obtain the antidote by kidnapping the Gordon family and killing them if Lawrence fails. This is a surprising turn.

If you didn't know he would come and I will always remember him. Seeing this for the first time and being blown away. Adams's damn mind is blown, and as he sits there, amazed, we get another great image, that of the bodies in the bathroom slowly. wake up from his eight-hour nap and give him a well-deserved cat stretch. This is John Kramer, the man we saw in Gordon's hospital bed, and he is the real puzzle killer, the mastermind behind it all. We have seen it so far. He tells Adam how he was supposed to escape. The key to that chain is in the bathtub.

But that's bullshit. John Adam didn't even get a chance to get that thing back after a quick and crazy montage. Showing many. Of the moments in this movie, the puzzle turns out the lights and delivers the most surprising final words of a horror movie I've ever seen. Hell yeah, Adam was left screaming in the dark, but he's not continuing this death count. But I'll have to trust myself during this series, but a lot of other people ended up counting. So let's see how many in the numbers? Six people died in Saw and since Amanda was able to escape her trap, all the victims were men.

So we start this series with a blueberry pie right there with a run time of 103 minutes. We got one death on average every seventeen point one two. minutes Which is a little slow, but this game is just getting started. I'll get the golden chain saw. The best one killed Zepp. It doesn't happen on screen like a lot of blood here. But it's still effective because of Adam's unbridled anger. Plus, killing someone with a toilet tank lid is a good thing. It doesn't matter how it's done. Boring machete for the silliest murder. Definitely going to hit a single bullet in the chest.

It's no way for Roger Murtaugh to come out and guess what. For the Saw series, Kill Counts, I'm proud to announce two new awards that I'll be giving out in each episode. ThePlatinum punji sticks will go to the coolest trap in every movie. Regardless of whether they killed someone or not, the inaugural winner will do so. Of course, it will be the reverse bear trap that Amanda escaped from despite not being able to see the end result. This trap has become the quintessential Saw trap and is so violent that you even feel the mannequin's head being destroyed during the demonstration.

On the contrary, the rusty mousetrap. The silliest trap goes to the movies. I'll give this one to Adams' bathroom trap because his whole game was just letting the faucet go down the drain when he woke up and that was it. It Saw came out in

2004

and changed the horror genre. forever Not everything holds up 14 years later But it still deserves recognition for how influential it was. I'll be taking a look at the first Saw II sequel next week. But until then, I'm James and Janisse, this is the death count. Thank you. Much to see today's new Kill Count series, new set, do you like it?

I have more Saw props in the mail that didn't arrive in time, but don't worry the next time you see this background, it will be even more stylish. It's a work in progress. I've had a crazy couple of weeks with Monsterpalooza and Taxes and preparing for Texas Frightmare. You're getting a Monsterpalooza video next week and be good people.