I Did See It

Date: Thursday, 12th October 2023

Topic: Discussion

Subtopic: Saw

This is my personal blog which I created - in theory - partially as a place where I can talk about things that, due to my ongoing struggles with ocd, I'm unable to talk about with others; but in practice, I am still beholden to the guilt which rules my life, so here's my stupid little disclaimer before my stupid little post! This franchise sucks. A lot of horror after 9/11 shifted into weird ideas of punishment and justice where 'horror' is just an avenue to see people Get What They Deserve for skirting acceptable social standards, through near-pornographic torture - and look who's at the forefront of that trend! They spend so much time entertaining the thought of "oooh, but what if Jigsaw did have something important to say about society~" about a cunt says does the exact same stuff everyone else in society already says: "I fucking hate drug addicts."

This is, without question, my favourite movie franchise of all time. Saw X is the newest installment in that. Did it disappoint me to watch John Kramer torture some more drug addicts and sex workers? No, because if I watched these movies with the hopes of seeing ideas I agreed with, I would have given up after like the 2nd one. Did it surprise me to watch a white man going to mexico and torturing mexican drug addicts and sex workers, and still be asked "well what if he has a point?" Yeah, okay, sure that one got me. Utterly floored to see the fucking neon yellow mexico filter on a film which came out this year. I am convinced I watched a different version of this movie than the one people are talking about online. "This is the best one since the 3rd!" I just watched an attempted sexual assault end in the victim being kidnapped and getting beheaded. Am I meant to give a shit about her scam during that. Sure, let's have Jigsaw save that kid before people forget he's the 'morally gray' protagonist we're supposed to be rooting for. What in the goddamn?

There are mercies, however. The quality was better than Spiral was, and we didn't have to suffer through any cop sideplots let alone that "actually I became The Killer to reform the police" insanity like last time. I missed having Tobin Bell so badly I was so ridiculously happy to see him as Jigsaw again, and to have Billy back. I got the chance to imagine awful, gory catharsis for my own medical malpractice. Amanda existed. We do NOT have time in this post to discuss how I feel about Amanda as a character, so suffice to say that she was my primary motivation to watch this thing and I was legitimately delighted to see her not only have so much screen time, but to get another little morsel of her and John's dynamic. I thought she was wearing a dog collar the whole time until I realised it was probably a choker, but then I googled it and it still looks like that so thank you to the costume department. Saw my favourite rotting corpse. And who could forget, "epic fail." It was a pretty good night 👍.