“This is very cruel, Oskar. You’re giving them hope. You shouldn’t do that. *That’s* cruel!”
– Amon Goeth from Schindler’s List
“Shit… charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500. I took the mission. What the hell else was I gonna do?”
– Captain Benjamin J. Willard from Apocalypse Now
David Hackl’s Saw V is fighting a multiple front battle at the box office this weekend. Perhaps, in the oddest clash of the box office titans, Jigsaw may have met his match in the form of Walt Disney’s High School Musical 3: Senior Year. It is no secret that once this teen phenomenon reached the big screen, it was going to be big, so big that not even the gargantuan formulaic torture induced saga was going to be able to stop it from being number one this weekend. After five entries, the Saw franchise has incredible resilience, but in between the release of Saw IV and Saw V several great horror films have been released. The Mist, I Am Legend, Cloverfield and The Ruins have shown that horror films can still frighten and still tell an engaging story. While I am not a big fan of The Strangers, it produces enough genuine thrills in the first half to give it some credibility, but it seemed too much like an unofficial English remake of Them (Ils). In this month of October, two very different kind of horror films have preceded Saw V; may have stolen Saw V’s thunder. The first of these would be John Erick Dowdle’s Quarantine– an effective remake of the Spanish horror film, Rec. Quarantine is the latest film inspired by The Blair Witch Project filmmaking style where the found camcorder footage is used to tell the story. By the way, The Blair Witch Project holds up very well after all these years. This style worked incredibly well in Cloverfield. It even worked somewhat well in George Romero’s heavy handed Diary Of The Dead. And while I think Quarantine has some genuine thrills, it does remind me of Chris Gorak’s far superior, Right At Your Door. Still, Quarantine does some things right and it creates a tense atmosphere. Let it be said that it is not tame at all– something Saw V could actually be accused of by even its hardcore legion of fans.
Jigsaw and his minions have nothing on Vice President Dick Cheney in Oliver Stone’s engrossing W. which may turn out to be the best film of the Fall Season. You may want to believe the timing of W.’s release has something to do with the November Presidential Election, but let us be honest, it is a true horror film. What better month to release a horror film than October. Let me be very clear; I appreciate what the horror genre does and when it does it well, it is one of the best rides in town, but reality has a way of unleashing our greatest fears and panics. In W., a country is deceived into going into a poorly planned war where the Vice President openly admits there is no exit strategy– no end in sight. In the film, Richard Dreyfuss’ portrayal of the Vice President is so chilling that one would like to really believe he is some made up boogeyman that exists in the closet of our nightmares. He is based on reality as are the events in the film which make it terrifying. The film is the equivalent of reliving a series of nightmares. Not only did Oliver Stone make an evenhanded and empathetic film, he made a film that is quite terrifying at times. Saw V must also contend with other events in the real world. The film must contend with the daily bad economic news. We live in harrowing and frightening times. The words recession and depression are on everyone’s lips. I remember watching The Grapes Of Wrath in the Seventh Grade and the film’s depiction of the Great Depression scared the hell out of me. Listen to news on any given day; it is downright apocalyptic. Cassandra is working overtime these days. No wonder everyone is rushing to High School Musical 3: Senior Year.
The scariest thing I can say about Saw V is how utterly dull and lifeless it is. While I was never a huge fan of this franchise, I thought the first three (in decreasing ways) tried to do something to keep the story fresh. If the series ever did truly jump the shark with the fans, it would have been with Saw IV, but at least that one had a few moments of interest thanks largely to Tobin Bell’s Jigsaw/John. It becomes very obvious that these films take themselves too seriously. A little humor would not have hurt this franchise at all. That may be the reason I have never been able to get into these films in the first place. If Lionsgate truly is going to release a Saw film every year, they might want inject some humor into them. For films that take themselves so seriously, they became parodies of themselves even before Scary Movie 4 had their way with them. The reason the Final Destination films worked so well was because they do not take themselves too seriously. Seann William Scott was in the first one and that tells you something. Even Eli Roth knew that humor was very important when making Cabin Fever and Hostel. I like the first Hostel film, but the second one just got on my nerves halfway through it– it just rubbed me the wrong way at the time. At least Eli Roth does not take himself too seriously, even in the second one. I would have actually welcomed an Eli Roth directed Saw film. Love him or hate him, his involvement would have made for an interesting film. Even better, I would have loved to have seen Edgar Wright or Takashi Miike take a turn behind the camera. When it comes to Grand Guignol, no one does it quite like Miike. This is wishful thinking on my part and I am not sure how much freedom they would have been allowed, but any breaking of the stagnant formula would have been an improvement. Speaking of Lionsgate, if you are going to give wide releases to this series, the least you could have done is given Ryuhei Kitamura’s The Midnight Meat Train a real release. It would not hurt to beef up the release of Darren Lynn Bousman’s Repo! The Genetic Opera. The Saw films reek of organized fun and could certainly use a Gonzo approach to make them bearable.
The sin of committing terminal blandness at the movies has been prevalent at the box office this Fall Season, but it really stands out in this latest Saw installment. There is a story or I should say storylines going in the film. Jigsaw/John (Tobin Bell) is seen only in flashbacks, but he has a new disciple to carry out his bloody deeds and elaborate torture devices. Costas Mandylor returns as Forensics expert, Mark Hoffman. Hoffman is now doing Jigsaw’s dirty work. He goes on the hunt to protect himself from the likes of Agent Strahm (Scott Patterson) who manages to survive one of the torture devices. First of all, you have chosen two of the dullest characters to be the focal points of the film. It plays like a very remedial version of Righteous Kill, which was pretty insipid to begin with. Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas and characters. This is like one of those Star Wars novels or comic books which focus on some obscure character from the films whose claim to fame was a hand job from a hooker in Mos Eisley. Neither one of these actors has much screen presence; Costas Mandylor seems to be doing a really bad Eric Roberts impersonation throughout the entire film. It is here where you miss Tobin Bell’s John. At least, he has some screen presence. Granted Jigsaw always came across as a second rate Dr. Josef Mengele crossed with a second rate Meyer Lansky, but at least it gave the series some weight. His constant recordings on mini audio cassettes where he passes down his moral judgments, remind me more and more of Kevin Spacey’s John Doe from Seven. There is another storyline going on where a group of five strangers find themselves going through the warehouse of horrors and having to make difficult decisions in a Darwinian survival of the fittest mode. Of course, the strangers have something in common. Most notable of these strangers is Brit (Julie Benz). Julie Benz is best known for playing Rita Bennett on Showtime’s incredible series, Dexter. Speaking of serial killers, where is Dexter Morgan when you need him? He could outsmart Agent Hoffman and Jigsaw on his worst day. In the end, I am not sure these two storylines have much to do with each other. I am not sure it even matters as long as long as each new device hacks and rips its next victim to shreds. Even the trademark torture devices of the Twisted Pictures franchise seem leftover and tired from previous installments.
I deeply regret not seeing Wes Craven’s The Serpent And The Rainbow in the theaters on its opening weekend twenty years ago with my fellow classmates. I know I missed out on an incredible communal experience. I say that because the experience of seeing a midnight screening of Cloverfield earlier this year was such an intense and rewarding movie going experience. I remember hearing the people in my senior class go into great detail about Wes Craven’s latest film which was a huge improvement from Deadly Friend. The Cloverfield experience reminded me of what I missed out on in my youth. The Ruins and The Mist have also created memorable movie going experiences, but as bleak as they are, they are still incredibly engaging and thought provoking. They are a mirror of the panics and fears that exist in the real world in the post-9/11 era. For that matter, enduring the five Saw films verges on near sadomasochism as they too are a statement on the images from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. I hate the term “torture porn”, but in their own way, the Saw films serve as a reminder as to what is going on in the real world. The scariest thing is that I truly do see the appeal of a film like High School Musical 3: Senior Year during these turbulent times. Not only is it escapism in its purest sense, it is also a chance to experience high school as fantasy. High school was never like this. The film is the perfect antithesis to Nanette Burstein’s American Teen. Even in American Teen, there is hope. A little hope and humor in the Saw films would go a long way, but I do not see it happening anytime soon. Twisted Pictures could use a huge shock to their rigid and stale crown jewel.
