You wake up, groggy and disorientated. There’s dull thumping inside your head. As your eyes adjust to the gloom your surroundings are unfamiliar. Your attention is drawn to a TV displaying static but nothing else. There are numerous doors along the walls of the room, each crudely numbered in paint, each with a clock above them. Around the room there are…the TV screen suddenly flicks and a mannequin doll stares at you. ‘Hello’ it says ‘I want to play a game. As you can see there are ten doors in this room, one leads to your escape the others are sealed, you only have one chance to pick the right one if you don’t you will be left here to die. If you want to take a chance you can open any door now…but this room also contains something else. Search around the room and you will find boxes, inside these boxes are pieces of paper…these pieces of paper have clues as to which door is the correct one. Some boxes are easier to find than others but to get each one you must be able to endure some pain, the more pain you suffer the more clues you shall have and the more chance you can get out alive. You have one hour to escape if you fail then all doors are locked. Think carefully but you better be quick about it’. This isn’t one of the situations one of the characters find themselves thrown into in Saw, its pretty mundane compared to what you’ll see in the film my mind just isn’t twisted enough yet, this is just a taster of what this film is about.

It’s certainly a bit different to usual. We’ve had the glut of slashers and now creep-out films such as The Ring are now getting followers to fill up that sub genre. Saw marks another progression, taking torture and suffering extreme and being clever about it. This isn’t the first film to do so, it isn’t making a new sub-genre all of its own here but it’s doing something different from the standard norm we are seeing a lot of lately. Being different and being good are two separate things though. It’s no good thinking you’re clever when you’re not. Luckily Saw manages to pull it off pretty well. The story chops and changes from the present to the past frequently as the two guys slowly get their memories back. We also get to see the subplot of the kidnapping of Doctor Gordons wife and child plus happening at the same time as the two men are holed up. There are then the many twist and turns along the way. Clues to who Jigsaw is are thrown into the mix as well as the slow reveal of just who Adam and Doctor Gordon really are. You probably need all this to pad the film out as seeing two guys locked in some room, no matter how messed up the situation is, isn’t going to maintain a lot of interest. With the pace kept fairly snippy and new situations cropping up all the time the viewer is kepy entertained and, for the most part, not knowing what to expect. More seasoned film goers should be able to guess who Jigsaw is, though, without waiting until the very end.

Saw isn’t without its faults though. The premise is nice and original, the methods of torture well thought out but the film lets itself down in some areas for being a little too ordinary. The weakest part of the film would be the obligatory cop double pairing. David Tapp (Danny Glover) and Steven Sing (Ken Leung) play the usual mix of Cop Who Is Obsessed With Jigsaw and Cynical Smartarse Cop. Obviously the police would investigate this case but it just paves way to the few shortcomings of the movie. Not content with the pairing being stereotypical they also have to investigate ruined buildings in the dead of night just to add a bit more of a horror cliché to the mix. Its okay enough to watch, after all they are investigating one thoroughly messed up guy, but given the choice you’d rather be watching Adam and the good Doctor suffer a bit more. If the budget had allowed it we would have probably been treated to more torture situations devised by Jigsaw but the cop drama is left to pad out the film. Towards the end things get a bit too silly though and this will lead to a few laughs at the absurdity of it all which is a shame as the film had kept its head above the campness of other horror films but it still more than makes up for it from previous events in the film.