Let the game begin: “Saw” for 20 | features

In the early 2000s, it was James Wang and Lee Whannellthe smash hit “Saw,” which was credited (or blamed by less generous critics) for helping to popularize the prevalence of so-called “torture porn.” Raw, visceral and choppy, the low-budget cop thriller captivated audiences with its stunning, nightmarish torture scenes, spawning ten sequels (and counting), video games, a slew of parodies, and a new horror icon in Bill. puppet. But as writers, directors, stars and stories came and went, editor Kevin Greutert remained the lifeblood of Saw , giving the franchise its signature breakneck pace and frantic, high-octane editing.

The brainchild of Australian film students James Wan and Lee Whannell, Saw is a 2004 horror thriller about a cat-and-mouse game between the police and a “Puzzle Killer” who kidnaps his victims and subjects them to deadly “tests.” .” In a complex, interwoven series of intersecting non-linear storylines, Cary Elwes’ Dr. Lawrence Gordon and Adam Lee Vanella find themselves at the center of it all, waking up chained to pipes at opposite ends of a dirty bathroom with a bloody corpse between them. .

It’s a messy, violent, claustrophobic film with an incredibly cliffhanger ending, but it’s the editing where Saw really comes together, as Greuthert said Letterboxd in an interview last year. Clocking in at a modest hour and 43 minutes, the film races along at an almost headache-inducing pace, which Greuthert says is by design: “James Wan has often talked about the idea of ​​’never being boring,’ which sounds obvious, but… I think we try more than normal film to make sure it moves. There’s a good reason behind every cut I make, even if it’s a very short clip, usually in a Saw movie.

The most surprising thing about the prevalence and influence of Saw’s traps in horror (and in pop culture in general) is how little time they occupy in the film. When you think Saw, you think gruesome traps, buckets of blood, and gruesome body displays, but Saw on the page is mostly a cop procedural after a cat-and-mouse game played by a serial killer. with the police, a la “Se7en”. It’s an eerie chamber drama built on a powerful performance by Cary Elwes, an eerie slow burn that builds to a heartbreaking twist (“Game Over”) that happens to be peppered with an extra dash of brutality.

But while the brutality may come in small, concentrated doses (at least in the original Saw), Wan’s twisted, innovative trap designs combined with Greuthert’s chaotic, fast-paced editing give way to the oddly unsettling experience of watching someone desperately try to escape a Jigsaw trap. And while the franchise has no shortage of gruesome pitfalls that highlight Greert’s penchant for quick shots, re-use of footage, and disruption of continuity, no trap is a better showcase of Greert’s signature Saw editing style than the nightmare that started it all, Reverse trap.

The inverted bear trap worn by Shawnee Smith’s hapless heroine Amanda is the first time we see one of Jigsaw’s abnormal creations at work in real time, recreated in minute detail as Dr. Gordon and the audience watch as Amanda recounts the experience to the police . . Created by Stewart Prain and reworked by Vaughn and special effects supervisor Thomas Bellissimo, the upside-down bear trap is scary enough on its own—even in a vacuum, watching it open and tear open a Styrofoam mannequin’s head is terrifying.

But Amanda is not in a vacuum. She wakes up tired and strapped to a chair in production designer Julie Berghoff’s dirty, grimy world with the taste of “blood and metal” in her mouth — and as the countdown begins, “Saw” kicks into high gear. As Smith writhes and struggles, the camera spins in dizzying, discordant circles, quick cuts and sudden zooms whizzing by like nu metal.

In Jigsaw, time moves differently, and Greuthert makes the minute last as excruciatingly long as possible, speeding up and slowing down footage, reusing and cutting clips to make 60 seconds seem like a lifetime. But just when it seems the nightmare will never end, the trap ends as quickly as it began, and Greutert’s uncanny tendencies take a back seat until another victim needs punishment.

As one of the progenitors of the torture porn subgenre, the franchise is often accused of reveling in excessive violence over plot — and while that’s certainly true of some of the later installments, Greuthert and Wang’s use of gore in the first Saw is intentional and coupled with by necessity

While later special editions and director’s cuts feature extensive carnage, the original theatrical version of Saw relies on the shock value of self-mutilation and the power of Cary Elwes and Shawnee Smith’s performances instead of a tidal wave of gore. There are splatters of blood when Amanda searches for the key to her freedom in a man’s stomach or when Dr. Gordon chops off his leg, but it’s the footsteps, the sense of desperation, not the carnage, that make the early traps of Saw so terrifying.

True, not all Saw films are the same. After Lee Whannell stepped down as writer after Saw III , the franchise began to develop its current reputation for excess — excessive plot twists, excessive gore, and excessive flashbacks. But even if Saw 4-9 is more apt than previous installments, even the weaker entries have their own charm and cult following, thanks in large part to Greuthert, who remains with the franchise as editor of all but one of the Saw films.

While the nuances and innovations that made the first Dust such a ground-breaking piece of horror filmmaking begin to wane as the series progresses, Greuthert continues to deliver the top speed of the in-your-face editing that set the early traps. so forgettable but cool to eleven. Transitions become so outlandish as to border on the comical, as if the franchise itself is realizing how unraveled and intertwined its story has become and has instead decided to commit itself wholeheartedly to the spectacle—hence, Saw 3D.

Not to downplay the importance of Greuthert’s presence in the DNA of the Saw series, it’s worth mentioning that Spiral: From the Book of Saw, the Saw film that looks and feels the least like the franchise’s homegrown style, is the only release that Greuthert hasn’t been in chief editor. When Greuthert finally returned to the director’s chair (and the editing room) with X-Saw, it was supposed to usher the series into what one might optimistically call a new golden age.

Under Greutert’s direction, X-Saw received the best critical reception in the history of the franchise and incredible box office. But not only returning the Saw films to the most critically-acclaimed and culturally relevant they’ve ever been, X-Saw is also a testament to how decades spent in the dirty green world of Jigsaw managed to understand the pulse, tone and guts of of the film “Saw” in a way that few people do.

It’s his intense familiarity with the franchise that’s made X-Saw such a success, particularly among longtime fans — Greuthert places the story squarely in the middle of Saw’s messy chronology, as in previous entries, but actively works to subvert the tropes. and plot twists that fans have come to expect from the movies.

Especially in a movie theater environment where so-called “elevated horror” is becoming the status quo, it’s a wonder how a scrappy franchise that seemingly epitomized a subgenre that fell out of fashion 10 years ago continues to succeed. Despite its storytelling struggles, the Saw franchise (with Kevin Greutert at the helm) continues to prove itself as the cockroach of the horror world, churning out bold, brazen, gory new installments with no end in sight.