It is not clear which Saw movies critics and horror fans watch, when they come up with this all-too-common quote: "I can't go and see the Saw movies because they are just so agonizing and torturous, and everything is always so down."
In this case, the quote is from Mr. Disgusting's Bloody-Disgusting.com interview with actress Danielle Panabaker, starring in the 2009 reboot of "Friday the 13th."
What is she speaking of?
The number one accusation hurled at Leigh Whannell and James Wan's franchise is that it falls within the realm of, say, Eli Roth's torture-porn series Hostel. This is pretty far from the truth.
Let's look for a moment at content and underlying meaning of the Saw pictures. Jigsaw is a man decimated by cancer and a history of personal loss. Yes, he constructs elaborate traps that force his victims to make brutal choices between physical well-being and absolute survival.
Jigsaw does not torture people. His victims are selected from the corrupt, the addicted; the torturers, rapists, and morally vacuous of the world. In the moments of crisis into which he immerses them, Jigsaw demands they come alive for the first time — to explore the meaning of their biography and choose a better life or die by their own impatient adherence to the easiest path.
If we find Saw "torturous, and everything is always so down," it is because the franchise's creators take their material seriously. The films set a tone, and adhere to it. The narrative is complex and interwoven. We are not meant to walk away from Saw lightly, or without a head full of thoughts on what has happened before us.
And then there's the version of horror cinema people like Panabaker understand. Speaking in that same interview about the upcoming "Friday the 13th," she assures us: "The movie, for starters, is hilarious."
Therein, perhaps, lays real torture.
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