The opening trap in that one has always stuck with me for how annoying it is and how it perfectly captures the have your cake and eat it hatefulness of the series for me.
Yeah, that's what really stood out to me. Like, the hateful and weird ways women and certain "crimes" are treated in the series didn't start here, but this was the most brazen and exists completely out of context. The publicity stunt nature of it all (combined with the real world publicity stunt harming the people involved in real life) puts things into a realm that steps way out of bounds of what I'm willing to deal with. Like, there's nothing about it that works in context of the series; it just exists to hurt people for spectacle with the flimsiest premise involved. That's really what the series boils down to, which is such a shame because there really were sparks of something there. It's just, after sitting through all the other moments of either punching down or hateful spectacle gore just for the perversion factor that moment completely broke any willingness I had to engage with it further. Then the rest of Saw 3D happened to me and repeated that mistake multiple times.
Shame cause this started out pretty hopeful for me with the first movie actually having things that worked in it. There was a script that bothered to engage with different layers of everybody involved, there was a psych horror play along roller coaster ride, there was a unique stylization and flow to it that was very impressive for what they were working with. Then Saw 2 happens and immediately it falls deep into the slasher sequel hell bucket that somehow completely distorts every last worthwhile bit into something that's just really ugly. I want to just have fun with it and indulge in the grindhouse shlock factor, but I really can't tune out the "moral messages" attached to the John Kramer philosophy involved in every death. It' very quickly turns into an extremely lazy justification to get as perverse as possible on screen so you can "feel good" about indulging in gore. Even when they sorta hit on something that works (like Saw 6's take that health insurance is murder and the traps that match) they can't help but to add in a bunch of "look how grotesque these people are anyways" stuff that seems to demean and dehumanize people at more basic levels. It just plain sucks, and it only gets worse with each entry up to Saw 3D. I was willing to suspend my ability to deal with the less great moments of the first 3 since there was still some essence of swinging and missing, but after finishing the original run I can't anymore. I even hesitate to give the first movie praise. but I'll still stick my neck out for it a bit because I think it at least questions these elements more than the others. You can make grindhouse gorefest stuff work, but you can't just dehumanize and hate literally everyone to create gore toy puppets for the audience while using a justification of moral guidance.
Anyways I never know when to drop a bit, so we watched Jigsaw tonight hoping to feel better(my gf is in on the ride with me on this bless her). Thankfully that did raise my mood a bit. It's a completely mediocre to bad IP cashgrab in the era of IP cashgrabs, and I'll take that over whatever we had before. There's a lot less of just making people be gross in the moment and straight up punching down on disadvantaged or vulnerable people. I think it's still very clumsy and puts the audience in a position to root for failure too hard, but it's functional. I could at least have fun with this one to an extent and laugh at it in the terrible B horror IP ran to death kinda way, It's a bad movie, not even the most fun bad movie to riff on, but I didn't actively despise it like I learned to do with the rest. I'll finish this out tomorrow and see if that attitude holds up for the last remaining one (until X).
If you're interested in watching these just to know how bad they are, don't bother. Trust me on this, I've suffered enough and it's REALLY not worth it. This is not part of the bit, I am dropping kayfabe. They are straight up not worth your time and it's actually insanity that any part of our culture made this a wildly popular/profitable venture back in the day. Maybe check the first one, maybe the reboots will turn out less shitty for those invested (like I unfortunately am), but seriously shit just sucks.
