The Saw Diaries

In preparation for theavod’s definitive Sawcast, I kept copious notes while watching the films. I was going to toss them, but then it occurred to me, ‘hey Count, you’re trying to post things more often, right?’ And you know who’d love to read a running commentary of these movies in text form, with a few illustrations? People, that’s who!

Just a warning – the section on Saw 6 may be a little fractured. I took notes in longhand in a dark theatre, then attempted to transcribe them. Also that section doesn’t have any illustrations, for obvious reasons!

Sawtrospective:

SAW 1

- So based on that key placement, there was no way Adam could have survived.
- “technically speaking he’s not really a murderer”? Um, yeah. He is.
- Wait, how was the ‘guy gets set on fire’ thing supposed to work? The room was full of random numbers, where was the combination supposed to be?
- Hey, it the captain from the Shield!
- And why did that guy he had Amanda slaughter deserve to die?
- Wait, did the jigsaw pieces ever lead to anything? (future Count from 2 days later – no, they did not)
- Wow is Leigh Whannel a bad actor.
- Also, his character is a complete dick.
- Why does he not tell Cary Elwes about the photo? Cary obviously can’t be in charge of the thing.
- Why is the prefiler such a dick in the scenes where he’s all alone?
- And so creepy when he’s kidnapping the family? For a guy who’s supposedly another victim he sure does act like the villain when he’ on his own. Way to rip off that shot from Black Christmas, by the way.

- Likewise why does Danny Glover act so suspiciously?
- And why did prefiler deserve to die?
- Seriously? Stygian street?
- Of course it’s enough for a warrant. This part of the film is just so ridiculously stupid. And filmed so terribly.
- Wait, this is like six months into Jigsaw killing people. So why is he killing that guy in his own workshop?
- Seriously, I can’t believe they’re not calling for backup at this point.
- And then they don’t shoot him? And arrest him when he’s stumbling up the stairs?
- They, in fact, they don’t get him to lie down or shoot him in his leg?
- Yeah, you put four shotguns up to cover your escape. That makes you a murderer.
- Why weren’t there any holes in the back of his costume from the shotgun blast? Did the detective miss? At that range?
- Why would they figure that there isn’t a microphone in the room?
- What was with with the move to absurd comedy with Adam’s ‘death scene’?
- Then there’s that lengthy scene in the writer’s apartment that serves no purpose of any kind. I mean, it’s slightly creepy, but we get no new information in it, and it lasts three frigging minutes.
- Okay, that’s unfair, we do learn that it was him taking pictures of Cary Elwes, but we didn’t need nearly four minutes to figure that out.
- Why was the writer keeping all this a secret? Again, there’s no way he could possibly think that Cary Elwes was responsible.
- And there’s the scene where he could just reach out with the hacksaw and grab the phone. But doesn’t. Instead he uses the hacksaw to cut off his own foot. What, they couldn’t have put the phone another foot away?
- You know, you’re a doctor. Why are you cutting your foot off above the ankle, rather than below?
- The higher you cut it, the more bleeding there is. As a doctor, he should know that if you cut off the heel you can have absolutely minimal bleeding, and then slip your foot out of the cuff. Just like cutting off your thumb to get it out of a handcuff.
- Yes, it’s confirmed – there was no test for the writer, he was just supposed to die.
- Wait, how did Jigsaw trigger the writer’s electrocution? Both of his hands were visible. Did the prefiler do that?

SAW 2

- Ah, more of the media’s anti-snitch bias. Jerks.
- And then cops using proper police procedure also were caught by fatal traps (take that, game’s logic!)
- He’s not a serial killer? Um, yeah. He is.
- You’ve never killed anyone, but you were totally going to kill that guy in order to test your ‘drill into the neck’ trap?
- You didn’t claim or encourage being called the jigsaw killer? While cutting a precise jigsaw piece out of each person?
- How are they too stupid to hold the door of that crematorium open?
- Now that's some nice continuity.

The door is opened in this shot.

This is a shot from two seconds later. Great work, guys. Can't be bothered to digitally switch out a number in a nearly-still shot that lasts maybe 3 frames?

- It’s frankly not possible to find a key in a bed of syringes in three minutes. It can’t be done. Especially when you take for-god-damn-ever to get around to describing the trap to the kids. Hell, by the time they find the syringe pit there's only a minute left.
- Now, if there had been some clue about how they should turn off the light, that would be one thing. But there wasn’t.
- Speaking of which, that’s an extremely long-lived glowstick, you know that?
- Do they still make glass syringes? I honestly don't know, but it doesn't seem like it, does it?
– Why is no one noticing that Amanda isn’t getting pale or dying?
- That’s not a brown desk. It’s a grey desk. I know I'm niggling, but come on.
- He hit the guy where the number is? Don’t you see a problem with that logic?
- That’s a hilariously photoshopped picture of him and his dad.

- And now it's time for Donnie to have some touching memories of the son who may be dying.

Here's the time he and the kid were sitting outside the set, talking!

And remember how much fun they had, hanging out on the steps of the wardrobe trailer!

- Seriously. This was like a ten million dollar movie. You couldn't buy them a couple of baseball gloves and have them pay catch for five minutes?
- The ‘finger trap’ trap was maybe the stupidest trap ever. Easily defeated, and kind of dickish.
- Really? They didn’t notice that it was an elevator? Jigsaw’s entire plan is based on ten cops spending two hours in his office without ever once looking up?

Check out the only wide-ish shot of the elevator, from where the cops are running in-

Now here's what it looks like when the elevator is turned on.

That means the wooden safety grate was literally just out of frame in the previous shot. Totally invisible to us, but in plain view to everyone in the building. This has got to be one of the biggest abuses of offscreen space I've ever seen.

- Also, why didn’t Donnie call for backup after arriving at the house?
- the last house on the left? Come on.
- And now, of course, it’s the old ‘silence of the lambs’ trick.
- Um, yeah – we saw where the bathroom from the first movie was, and it’s not in this house:

- How exactly was Amanda supposed to ‘carry on’ Jigsaw’s work? She’s not exactly an engineer.

SAW 3

- Yeah, and my plan for cutting off the heel would have done less permanent damage than the complete crushing of the foot that donnie wahlberg does.
- Was Saw IV about the black swat team guy from 2&3? Oh, it was him! Neat.
- A classroom is much bigger than a prison cell.
- Yeah, it’s not humanly possible to tear your own jaw off. Just saying.
- Wow, I’d totally forgotten that Mandylor was in this for one scene! He's the new Jigsaw! Although, to avoid confusion, I will now be referring to him as Circular Saw.
- If the bomb is big enough to blow you into little bitty pieces, what function are the nails supposed to serve?
- Why, at the beginning of the next movie, have they not figured out that Amanda was in on it? She didn’t die on the tape, she knew Jigsaw… isn’t that worth an interview?
- Seriously? After she knows that Jigsaw’s in the house, she doesn’t immediately call the police for backup?
- There’s absolutely nothing stopping her from just pouring that acid out. More to the point, though, that trap is in no way escapable.
- Why are they being coy about the fact that it’s Amanda? We know it’s her.
- This opening scene with the doctor is just a cheat.
- Man, do I love Angus McFayden’s massive overacting.
- I’m pretty sure that collar wouldn’t make your head explode, but rather sever her neck.
- Also he’s happy to let people get killed just to see if his assistant is a crazy psychopath?
- Oh, look, it turns out that another person that needs to be tested is another doctor who he feels wronged him! What an amazing coincidence!
- His choice of targets are roughly as random as Charles Manson’s.
- Oh, Jeff, you’re such a dick.
- Also you could have just put your coat up to cover your face while you leaned in to get the key. That’s not exactly a well-designed trap.
- Um, that shotgun collar is the easiest thing ever to disarm. It works by something triggering all the hammers above the shotgun shells at once, causing them to fall and hit the primer in the shells.
- So couldn’t you just wedge a piece of just about anything in there to keep the hammer from falling?
- I just got a close-up of the collar and yes, yes you could.

- It’s startling just how unnecessary these flashbacks to the first saw movie are.
- Seriously? He got the key while the other guy was standing in front of the shotgun? That’s both convenient, and incredibly badly written!
- Really, you weren’t curious about the ring of shotgun shells around your wife’s neck?
- Wow, did this set up for a movie that never got made.

SAW IV

- So, the first five minutes of this movie are just a complete waste, aren’t they?
- Hey, it’s popular Canadian character actor Justin Louis!
- I’m not sure what that first trap was supposed to prove, but the lack of a message setting it up was kind of a dick move on circular saw’s part.
- Wait, if he could open his mouth, why didn’t he do that in the first place and avoid all the tsuris?
- That rat was just silly.
- From minute one of this movie they’re not even slightly hiding the fact that Mandylor is Jigsaw 2.0, are they?
- Here’s the great thing about being a minor player in a ‘Saw’ movie. There’s a good chance that, should enough characters get killed, you’ll be the lead!
- It happened with SWAT guy, and it happened with Mandylor!
- I’m not clear why they’re not watching the people on the Jigsaw case – at this point Circular Saw is just killing everyone involved in the case, so it stands to reason that SWAT GUY and Circular Saw himself are next.
- Another point aimed at ‘he’s just a serial killer settling personal grudges’ – his next victim? His longtime agent and business partner who continued representing his wife after the divorce.
- Still another Saw movie that’s not in real time, but is almost there.
- Wait, I thought he wasn’t a murderer – his whole plan this time was to have SWATTY watch as his traps killed people. The hair woman had no way of escaping.
- Also, you’re supposed to be an expert on the saw case at this point. Why didn’t he carefully examine the machine before touching her?
- Was Donnie just petting a friendly rat?
- Wow, this movie’s just going nuts with the cute transitions, isn’t it?
- Really? He made an unbelievably creepy doll for his child? Are you crazy? It’s nice to know that he’s always been super-crazy.
- So there’s finally someone who deserves to die.
- Really? He gave the guy 10 seconds to decide whether he should gouge his eyes out?
- And he’s killing people because they didn’t have the good sense to have a security guard at their health clinic that deals with the criminal underclass?
- And the whore from part 2 was there that night? That was one crowded methadone clinic.
- Art Blank? Seriously?
- They’re this careless about Jigsaw’s traps? Really? That’s insane.
- Yeah, the prediction stuff is just getting insanely ridiculous. He knew she would press the thing, and he would shoot Jeff?
- And that’s, what two instances in two minutes of people not being careful around Jigsaw’s traps? What case did they think they were working on?
- You know, there’s absolutely no reason for FBI agent to not call every single cop in the world to go with him.
- Where did they get all of those posed pictures of Jigsaw coming from?
- He and his wife owned a school?
- Yeah, they don’t so much write books about known killers who the police are busy tracking down.

- Or put them on magazine covers.

- Um, yeah. Once there’s a crazed serial killer running around with a possible grudge against me I don’t know if I’d stay in town. Maybe I’d blow town.
- I think the Saw series is kind of unique for planning stuff out in advance. 4 and 5 are basically one movie. Although it’s odd that the ‘box o’ glass’ is there so early.
- um, Jeff didn’t have any bullets in his gun – why did he pick up Amanda's gun and start waving it around after Jigsaw was already dead?
- The lesson that he was teaching through the movie – “Please don’t try to catch me any more”
- You know, if there’s any film that you’d think would have post-credits sequences, it would be Saw. But there aren’t any. Weird.

SAW V

- You know, backup’s on its way. You don’t have to go looking for some kind of a path out or anything.
- Jigsaw’s dead right there. What do you imagine that you’re going to find, other than a trap?
- Oh, look, you found the trap.
- Wait, the lawyer’s acting like he only just found out who the Jigsaw Killer was, but it’s been common knowledge for six months.
- Ultimate dick move? Not showing us what was in the box this movie.
- Wow, he can’t stop admitting that he’s Circular Saw in public, can he?
- And seriously, why isn’t jigsaw’s wife the prime suspect for being Circular Saw?
- “Over a dozen victims were found at the scene – two of them were cops” By my count there were ten. What am I missing, or is ten over a dozen now?
- This is the easiest trap ever. The guy on the end grabs a key and then smashes the rest, throwing each person their key. But no. Stupidity has to win. Hell, it works even if they don’t know one key would have worked in all boxes.
- No, wait, this second one was the easiest game ever. There’s clearly enough room for all of them in just one of the tunnels.
- You know, there’s no reason for the fun guy to not just tell them all what’s going on.
- Way to kill off the only interesting character.
- Wait, the video in the second room is based on the knowledge that only four of them made it out?
- Wait, how do those tunnels protect them from the explosion?
- Oh, Asian Cop – are you going to be the lead cop next time around?
- Circular Saw, I’m not sure how you plan to keep getting away with it now that Jigsaw’s dead?
- You didn’t find elevator man suspicious? There’s no way that crappy building has a parking garage, and he was clearly on an elevator going down. (we know this because there’s a B, but nothing else.)
- Oh, wait – on the top it’s a B, but on the buttons it’s a P. Weird.
- Here's something funny from Agent Strahm reading the Jigsaw files:

First off, check how they've added Circular Saw to the early cases, despite his conspicuous absence from the first film. It gets weird from there, though-

Here, on the rest of the list, they've announced that 'Eric Matthews' was an investigator on the murders from part 2. Except the investigation into those murders didn't really start until after Donnie had been abducted. So how can he be on the case?

Also, who's this 'Fisk' who keeps showing up on the case files. Is it the other Asian cop whose name I don't remember?

- This is maybe the worst-arranged frame ever. There’s no way it’s plausible that Strahm could be involved. I know his partner who can alibi him for most of the time is dead, but come on.
- Kind of a dick move on Jigsaw’s part, leaving the info that Circular Saw is his partner with that lawyer long after he’d been working as an effective sidekick.
- Wow, look – it’s a flashback that serves no purpose, to a character we don’t care about, solely so they can announce that basically every victim has had a flashback!
- Are we going to see ‘set on fire’ guy’s origin next time?
- Oh, and why is the razor wire cage still there, six months later?
- But wait, if he had Circular Saw helping, why did he need that other guy in 2 to kidnap people?
- I’ll admit – I’m impressed by their ability to keep rebuilding sets over and over again.
- Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s not how electricity works.
- It’s odd how the film has become entirely soap opera at this point, and the whole ‘trap’ part of this film is entirely incidental, and kind of uninteresting.
- So the ex-wife is teaming up with Circular Saw? Does that make her Table Saw?
- Man, Saw VI has a lot to explain.
- Wow, that’s not an answer to Circular Saw’s question at all. (about Amanda and Emotion)
- So wait, he had to go from Jigsaw’s house straight over to the police station to find out about the kidnapped doctor, to pretend to kidnap himself?
- Wait, if Jigsaw arranged a game where he knew that everyone would die, doesn’t that violate the entire precept of his game?
- Also, the ‘everybody dies’ plan was based entirely on a man who’s been dangling from a chain by his neck for two hours, slipping on a block of ice, and has atrophied muscles from six months of living in a box with no sunlight being able to accurately aim and fire a pistol.
- Yeah, Circular Saw wasn’t there adjusting the tapes, so how could they be sure that four people would make it out of the first room?
- And three out of the second?
- He says he wants them to work together, but the whole system of videos (which were shot weeks ago, by Jigsaw) is based on them not doing that.
- Circular Saw, like Jigsaw before him, is a dick.
- Yeah, there’s no way one person could fill the tank with ten pints of blood. You’d suffer catastrophic loss of blood pressure and your heart would stop long before getting near ten.
- So what was Jigsaw’s wife’s connection to the burning building? Or is this just more setup for the next movie?
- And was Xavier the dealer who set him up to burn the building down? No, that would be way too much of a coincidence.
- You know, Costas Mandylor is actually pretty good as Circular Saw. It’s not much of a part, but he’s really going for it. Good for him.
- Circular Saw lives in a modern house over a giant subterranean complex?
- I hope Jigsaw gave him an awful lot of money, because these traps can’t be cheap.
- Yeah, the glass box being all planned out is one hell of a stretch.
- Jesus I love what a moron Strahm is – he just keeps walking into traps. This is three in the course of a week.
- Wow do they need to process Circular Saw’s voice a lot more.
- That being said, Tobin Bell was always completely recognizable, even in the first film.
- Yeah… for a guy who was given ‘anonymity’, Circular Saw sure doesn’t care much about wearing gloves.
- You know, for a film that leaves so much hanging, a ‘to be continued’ at the end isn’t too much to ask for, is it?
- Like, what if you’re someone who doesn’t go to circularsawthemovie.com to find out when the next movie is coming out? This would be massively unsatisfying.
- Which raises a question – is this the most continuity-intensive film series in history, or just the most continuity-intensive horror series?

SAW 6

- Ah, yet another unsurvivable trap. What a surprise.
- Wait, they work for the umbrella corporation? Seriously?
- Hey, the guy he screwed over is a popular character actor!
- Hey, is that reporter from part 5, who got an important close-up and then didn’t have a line?
- Oh, Circular Saw. You’re so entertaining. Good job framing Agent Strahm. I mean ‘good’ sarcastically, of course.
- So she wasn’t dead after all? That actually makes a lot of sense. Wait, that’s sarcasm again.
- I’m not sure how he could possibly keep getting away with this stuff. But I presume that will be explained.
- Wow, Mandylor really isn’t doing a good job of making people think he isn’t Circular Saw.
- And way to keep giving Tobin Bell a paycheck!
- Okay, finally we’re going to find out what was in the box, other than Circular Saw’s identity.
- So he wants his wife to run a trap with circular saw?
- This is the most super-topical Saw movie ever!
- Oh, Circular Saw, can’t you ever win?
- Wait, why did the pendulum trap have Tobin Bell’s voice, but the message to Strahm didn’t? Can’t he do an accurate impression? The beginning of the last film certainly suggests that he can.
- Oh, Circular Saw, don’t you know that she’s going to betray you? And that you haven’t had a ‘test’ yet? Have you been paying attention to what an unbelievable dick your boss is?
- Oh, Amanda. The fact that you wound up crazy, murderous, and dead, suggests that the fix didn’t take.
- This is one hell of a rewrite. This is what happens when you don’t plan ahead well enough.
- Hold on… Is he going after the insurance company that turned Jigsaw down for a treatment he needed?
- I just checked my watch, and this movie is taking a really long time to get going. I don’t know what the running time is, but shouldn’t we be somewhere in the vicinity of the trap by now?
- Oh, there it is. Good.
- So wait, it turned out that Jigsaw was actually Keith Olbermann?
- Five envelopes full of targets? Does this mean that Circular Saw is planning to hang up his spurs once all the tests Jigsaw planned are over?
- Holding my breath along with the characters. I always find this fun.
- Wow. Jigsaw just totally killed that man for being a smoker. Because there was no way a smoker could have beaten a non-smoker in this test.
- I really feel like the ‘gauntlet of tests’ has a chance of working better here than it did in five. Or even three, given the awfulness of most of three’s traps.
- I just remembered something from earlier – did they kill all those people in 5 just to frame Strahm? And what was an FBI agent doing investigating a local arson case?
- And now the reporter will be killed just for investigating Circular Saw? And Table Saw?
- I really don’t understand why the reporter is so blasé when literally everyone involved in the case at all gets murdered by one of the three saws.
- And now she’s been captured, too.
- Oh, so it had to do with a more personal problem between him and Jigsaw, not an obvious medical claims issue. That’s better, I guess.
- Is there a permanent ‘SAW’ set in Toronto? Because if there is, I want to go there and check out the bathroom from part 1 and the house from part 2.
- Why did he even think he wouldn’t have to play? Is he an idiot?
- You’re such a dick, Jigsaw.
- Man, they weren’t kidding around about the super-topicality of this, were they?
- The lesson to everyone? You’re immoral just for working at an insurance company.
- What a valuable moral experience this is turning out to be for that insurance executive.
- Circular Saw really doesn’t care about leaving fingerprints, does he? I mean, I know that he doesn’t anticipate anyone finding him out, but wow.
- Also, you were one of the detectives on the jigsaw case, and you had access to the autopsy files. It didn’t occur to you to check on the weapon used before creating your fake trap?
- I feel like Amanda’s hair grew more than six months’ worth between saws 2 and 3. Was she wearing a wig?
- So, at this point there were what, twenty people just hanging out in that meat processing plant?
- Seriously? He actually did turn down Jigsaw’s attempts to get cancer treatment? I can’t believe how heavy-handed this is.
- I’m confused – doesn’t Jigsaw have the money to pay for all his medical costs himself?
- Yes, it’s official, Jigsaw is Keith Olbermann.
- That ‘eastern medicine’ thing was nonsense.
- Why isn’t this guy encouraging Jigsaw to go out and try this experimental treatment? I mean, what has he got to lose?
- The ultimate message of the film – had Jigsaw lived in Canada he never would have killed anyone.
- Is this chain-link maze in hell? Because she seemed to be suspended over nothingness.
- That was so much longer than seventy seconds in getting her through the maze.
- There was also no good way of getting that key out in time.
- So she writes stories about Jigsaw but doesn’t see the importance in actually listening to the message?
- Circular Saw, you’ve got me on your side, and I’ll tell you why – because of how amazingly suspicious you look. I mean, seriously, you’re the worst at hiding your evilness that I’ve ever come across. There’s basically no scene in which you’re not standing there, shifting your eyes nervously from side to side. Which makes you basically the ultimate underdog.
- How did they have the time and resources to kidnap 12 people in a couple of hours?
- You know, the second Jigsaw’s identity was revealed it seems like this guy should have gone to the cops and announced ‘you know, he’s going to murder me next’. Because, other than the guy who murdered his son, this guy screwed over Jigsaw harder than basically anyone else.
- Well, the terrible frame went exactly as badly as it must have, but I guess that’s it for Circular Saw.
- Although I really would appreciate it if there was another movie about Circular Saw having to go through some kind of a test.
- This is maybe the world’s most pointless flashback.
- Seriously, though – why did he leave the tape in the first place? I mean, he knows it’s not going to match the Jigsaw tapes, so why let the police get ahold of it?
- Also, these are maybe the most incompetant FBI agents in the history of cinema. They already knew he was circular saw when they called him in, but they didn’t take any precautions against being murdered by him? This is almost as bad as revenge of the sith.
- They’re trying to make it like Circular Saw was responsible for the whole Amanda fiasco, but Amanda was already pretty damn corrupted.
- Um, how did Jigsaw miss Amanda being there? He saw the other guy running away. Yeah, that’s crap.
- Oh, Table Saw, I’m not as interested in a sequel about you as I was in another movie about Circular Saw.
- Ooh, the bear trap has gone digital!
- Um, it was the living who had the ultimate judgement over him.
- Wait, so she just wanted to murder Circular Saw? No game, nothing like that?
- Circular Saw, you are now my hero! Or if not my hero, at least by a wide margin the most interesting character in the history of this franchise.
- Credits!
- Hey, that was the original Murdoch Mysteries as the victim! I knew I recognized him from somewhere.
- There are no other interesting credits.
- Okay, thinking about this the next day, it seems like Jigsaw is just a moron – for the first time in his entire history of creating ‘tests’ he found a person that the test might have actually worked on, and then instead of letting the man make the world a better place with the lesson, he arranged it so that the ‘test’ would absolutely guarantee that he’d die at the end.
- Jigsaw is such a dick.

OVERALL THOUGHTS –

He’s a pretty common murderer, come to think of it. I mean, he announces that he wants to teach deserving people ‘life lessons’, but then, by some amazing coincidence, most of the people who need those lessons are are the cops who are trying to catch him, or the doctor who told him that he had cancer? Or a newspaperwoman who wrote unflattering stories about him, or, in the case of part 2, the cop who framed amanda and put her in jail.

Also, for all his bragging about not being 'a killer', even if you somehow gave him that point (which no one ever would), he's one of the most prolific kidnappers in the history of American crime, and kidnapping is, under the American legal system, equally as grave as murder.

Also, all of his attempts at ‘rehabilitation’ have been utter failures. At some point don’t you have to start suspecting that it’s your method that’s flawed, and not the people who are being tested? For example, let’s say I theorized that I could cure cancer by setting people on fire. And all of them, instead of being cured of cancer, die from being burned to death. Would they be responsible, for being the wrong kind of cancer patient, or would I be responsible, for using a completely asinine method for curing cancer?

Considering that Jigsaw has, to date, a 0% success rate, maybe it’s not the people he’s picking that are the problem.

That being said, watching them all back to back gives them an overall effect that none of the films had seperately. It’s, oddly enough, like a really poorly-constructed jigsaw puzzle. The lack of proper planning ahead means that the pieces don’t exactly fit together, but if you put them all next to each other you can kind of see that they’re trying to add up to something bigger.

And, weirdly, that’s got me interested in seeing what comes next.

Damn it, Saw – you win. I’m now officially looking forward to seeing Saw VII.