The Saw Franchise Review- By Michael Carlisle

 Title: Saw Franchise (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII)
Years: 2004 - ???
Country: US
Language: English

The Saw Franchise is a disgusting mess of films that attempt to justify the intense gore portrayed in the film with shady philosophy. How Saw ever made it to its sixth sequel is beyond my understanding. Maybe The Hunger Games  was correct in suggesting that human “entertainment” has sunk and will sink to new lows.  The sadistic and merciless torture is unbearable to watch, though the franchise leans on the false idea that there are good morals within the story.  I’m not suggesting that all films with death and torture should not be watched, many films like Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist, have a good intention and are meant to educate the viewer. Saw is definitely not one of those, the philosophy is contrived garbage.

  Each Saw film is about an “ingenious” villain named Jigsaw who has enough  time on his hands to create clever traps and difficult puzzles for his victims as well as the law enforcement trying to stop him. In some films, like Silence of the Lambs, smart tactics work to give another dimension to the character, in Saw it doesn’t. This guy just seems like an asshole who tortures people for no reason.

Ah! Apparently there is a reason for Jigsaw’s madness, though it seems to change from film to film. Jigsaw only sets the traps to test the victim’s “will to live" and keeps stating that “those who do not appreciate life do not deserve life." Essentially he feels that horribly torturing people will make them stronger and appreciate life more. The problem is that no matter how hard these people try to live, a lot of them die in horrible ways. Another problem is that, no matter how much you tell the police “I was only trying to help them,” you’re still going to jail for a very long time. I find this whole justification for evil complete bullshit, in reality can I just beat a dog to death claiming I’m “helping it grow” without any negative consequences coming to me? HELL NO. If I was a victim of Jigsaw’s “game” and lived afterwards would I thank him for testing my will to live? HELL NO.


Then there’s the franchise's complete disregard for post traumatic stress disorder victims. Very few living victims of a serious traumatic event walk away with a greater appreciation of life. Very few people can get past that serious traumatic event. Victims of the Holocaust would often have panic attacks from even thinking about that horrific event. A lot of them lost their religious faith as well as their faith in humanity. A lot of post traumatic victims end up committing suicide because they do not know how to deal with the trauma that originated with the event. Children of parents who have been through horrific events can get PTSD from even trying to imagine what their parents went through. Jigsaw’s horrible “I was only trying to help them” justification completely falls flat, because in reality he likely made their lives, and the lives of everyone who know the victim, much worse.

There's also the sixth film that presents a whole new terrible justification because the writers probably realized how shady their original one was. Jigsaw was refused by his insurance provider for an experimental cancer treatment. He rants about how other people and insurance agencies shouldn’t take part in personal health and/or life and death decisions, acting like some defiant hero as he does so. Problem, Jigsaw is a hypocrite. He tells people that they should not be involved in his health affairs yet he gets in the health affairs of others by torturing and killing people. His original logic is “I’m just helping you”, so if the sixth film is consistent the insurance provider didn’t let him have the cancer treatment because they were just trying to help him! Instead of torturing people he should’ve just started to appreciate life more. Moving to Canada and getting a Canadian citizenship would help him too, it would take him a few years but he could certainly do it,  after all his cancer can’t be that bad considering he has been alive long enough to be in 7 Saw films.

In conclusion, this franchise consists the of long pointless scenes of torture and attempts at justifying them . How seven of these torture porn films were allowed to be made is beyond me. Though the makeup is decent, there is ultimately redeeming quality to this Franchise. The fact that it tries to justify cruel and inhumane torture and humiliation and glorify the mentally deficient serial killer known as Jigsaw is unforgivable. Piss on it! 0.5/5