Gordon tells Adam about his family,
throwing his wallet over so he can see pictures of them. Adam finds
a picture of Alison and Diana tied up, along with a message from
Jigsaw saying “X marks the spot. Sometimes you see more with your
eyes shut”. Adam hides this from Gordon and throws the wallet
back. Flashback footage shows Gordon leaving his house after a fight
with his wife, things only growing worse for her as the mystery
figure from earlier breaks into the house, tying up her and Diana.
The man is revealed to be Zep, who peeks out the window for some
reason. Apparently it was so he could be spotted by Tapp, who is
holed up in a building across the street watching Gordon's house. We
see something has happened to Tapp in the five months since first
learning about Jigsaw, as he has gone a bit off the deep end and
seems to live in a Room Full Of Crazy (complete with tons of
newspaper clippings about Jigsaw pinned to the walls) while
obsessively spying on Gordon.
We go back to the night of Gordon being
questioned, with Tapp returning him to the hospital after Amanda was
done speaking. Tapp obviously believes Gordon is still involved
somehow, dropping a vague threat and driving off. Tapp goes back to
his office to analyze the recording Jigsaw left for Amanda,
identifying some of the graffiti on a wall to an abandoned mannequin
factory in the city. Sing wants to get a warrant but Tapp dismisses
this, because they don't need no stinking warrants!
They take off to
investigate, finding Jigsaw's base of operations in the factory.
Their search turns up a diorama of the bathroom trap, Billy, an
ominous looking pig mask, and a man tied in a chair with a drill on
either side. Before they can free the man they hear Jigsaw arrive,
Sing wanting to take him down but Tapp makes him hide because he's
curious what Jigsaw is going to do. Danny Glover's character is NOT
a very good police officer in this film, I guess he must have gotten
sick and tired of doing things by the book after Lethal
Weapon.
Sing gets fed up and draws his shotgun
on Jigsaw, but the killer activates the drill trap and tells the
detectives they need to make a decision what they're going to do.
Sing ends up shooting the drills to make them stop, but this
distraction allows Jigsaw to pull a blade hidden up his sleeve and
slit Tapp's throat to escape. We never get to see Jigsaw's face
during any of this, as he was wearing a black and red cloak the
entire time. Sing runs after him and shoots him in the back, but as
he draws closer he hits a trip wire and gets his head blasted off by
four shotguns Jigsaw had hidden in the hallway. Jigsaw then stands
up and calmly walks away, apparently having a bulletproof vest on or
something.
Back in the bathroom, Adam secretly
reads Jigsaw's message over and over again until he finally gets an
idea to have Gordon turn off the lights. This reveals an X painted
with fluorescent paint on the wall behind Gordon, the doctor breaking
it open with his saw to find a small lock box inside. Adam throws
him the key from the envelope, Gordon opening it to find a phone,
cigarettes, a lighter, and a note inside. The note tells him to keep
it a secret from Adam, saying:
“The cigarettes are harmless, I
promise. Smoking is only poisonous when it ends in bloodshed. Think
about this – you don't need a gun to kill Adam”.
Mulling this over, Gordon tries to call
911 but apparently the phone can only receive calls and not make
them. I, uh... sure, I guess that makes sense. Shouldn't this have
been a walkie talkie instead? Anyway, this triggers a flashback of
the night before where Gordon was in the hospital's parking garage
trying to make a call on his cell phone but had the same issue where
it wouldn't call out. We can see a man in the pig mask sneaking
around behind him, attacking the doctor and capturing him.
Back to the present, Gordon begins to
question how Adam knew to turn off the lights. Adam finally shows
him the picture, Gordon beginning to break down. He manages to
steel himself, turning off the lights (to hide the discussion from
the camera) and cooking up a plan with Adam to fake his death by
smoking one of the cigarettes dipped in the poisoned blood of the
body in the middle of the room. They attempt it, Adam pretending to
die with a hilariously bad reaction but suddenly gets electrocuted
through his chain which outs him as faking.
This impromptu shock treatment awakens
Adam's memory as well, as he gets his own flashback. We see him
developing photos in his apartment's dark room, photos which just
happen to be of Gordon. Oh ho, the plot thickens... Pig Mask grabs
him too, bringing us full circle. The clock on the wall now shows
it's a little past 5:30 as the phone begins to ring. Gordon answers,
first speaking to a terrified Diana and then Alison who asks if Adam
is there. With Zep holding a gun to her head, Alison says Adam is
lying to Gordon and knows all about him before the line goes dead.
Gordon confronts Adam over her words,
Adam coming clean and admitting he's been following him for days now
taking pictures of him cheating on his wife. He opens the bag the
saws were in and takes out handfuls of photos, throwing them at the
doctor. He tells Gordon he was paid by a tall black man with a scar
on his neck for his work, Gordon recognizing that description as
Detective Tapp.
Only he's not a detective anymore, he
was discharged from the police force after having a breakdown due to
Sing's death and has been harassing Gordon ever since. Adam glances
at one of the photos on the floor, and it's the shot of Zep peeking
out from Gordon's window. Wait, what? TAPP took this picture a few
hours ago, how in the fuck did it wind up here?! And there's no way
this is an alternate angle Jigsaw himself might have taken, this is
LITERALLY the picture Tapp took. RHAAARGH! Massive plothole is
massive!
Gordon identifies Zep in the picture as
the clock hits 6:00. Zep loads up his gun and has Alison calls
Gordon to tell him he's failed, BUT Alison managed to untie herself
earlier and tackles Zep. HELL YEAH! She wrestles the gun away from
him and tells him to not move, and this is where nearly every single
person in the movie theater I was at when I first saw this yelled out
“SHOOT HIM!”. This is why you should ALWAYS see a horror movie
in a theater if you get a chance to, they play so much better with an
audience.
But like all the idiots in this movie
that should have pulled the trigger when they had the chance, Alison
doesn't which allows Zep to tackle her back. Their struggle causes
the gun to go off twice, which draws Tapp's attention across the
street and he springs into action. Alison manages to stab Zep in the
leg with a pair of scissors as Tapp bursts in, getting into a
firefight with the orderly. Alison unties Diana and they get away as
Tapp and Zep soon run out of bullets, Zep taking out his opponent
with the patented vase of flowers to the head.
He jumps into his car, heading off to
the building where Gordon and Adam are being kept with Tapp hot in
pursuit. Gordon, having heard the gunfight and the screams over the
phone, is now hysterical as he believes his family is dead. He gets
electrocuted for a bit which knocks him out for a few moments, but
Adam is able to wake him up by throwing debris at him. The phone
begins to ring again, but it's too far outside of his reach. Uhh...
use your shirt dude! But no, Gordon starts losing his mind and
begins to SAW HIS FUCKING FOOT OFF. Adam's reaction to this pretty
much sums everything up: pure and undiluted horror This scene is
just absolutely beautiful, probably horror's finest moment since
Samara crawled out of the television.
Elsewhere in the building Tapp finally
catches Zep but gets shot in the chest for his trouble. The now
one-footed Gordon crawls across the floor, taking the gun out of the
dead man's hand, loading it up with his bullet, and shoots Adam dead.
We return to Gordon's house where Alison keeps trying to call her
husband on Zep's magic one-way phone. Zep enters and is about to
shoot Gordon when Adam, very much dead, springs to life and attacks
him. He grabs the lid from the toilet tank and beats Zep to death,
Gordon crawling over him to stop him by revealing he just shot him in
the shoulder and he'll be fine.
Gordon, starting to go into shock and
growing more pale by the moment, says he's going to go get help and
promises to come back as he crawls away. Adam searches Zep's body
looking for a key, finding a tape recorder instead. Wha?
“Hello Mr. Hindle, or as they called
you around the hospital: Zep. I want you to make a choice. There's
a slow-acting poison coursing through your system that only I had the
antidote for. Will you murder a mother and her child to save
yourself? Listen carefully, if you will. There are rules.”.
Before we get to hear the rest of the
recording, the dead body in the middle of the room STANDS UP. He
takes off the prosthetic head wound he was wearing and HOLY SHIT it's
the cancer patient John from the hospital, rocking his bitching soul
patch! He tells Adam the key to his chain is in the bathtub as a
rapid fire montage plays to attempt to tie all of this together.
Adam scrambles to grab Zep's gun to shoot him, but John uses a device
in his hand to electrocute him. John stumbles out of the room,
turning the lights off and yelling “GAME OVER!” as he slams the
door shut.
Cue the credits.
Ohh-kay. Based off his waking up
reactions as he gets off the floor, it's safe to assume Jigsaw
tranquillized himself so he'd be able to lie completely motionless on
a floor for nearly eight hours so I'll spot them that one. Or
wait... this raises a question though: HOW DID HE ELECTROCUTE ADAM
AND GORDON?!? It definitely wasn't Zep doing it, because the film
clearly goes out of its way to show he had no idea what was going on
when Gordon turned off the lights. No, it was Jigsaw doing the
shocking because he would heard the entire cigarette plan, so there's
NO WAY he was sedated.
I can forgive that Adam and Gordon
wouldn't notice a body pushing the button on the electrocution device
because their attention was drawn elsewhere, but I can't get over him
faking death for that long of a time span. On a movie that is so
carefully crafted to cover all their bases, this is such a major
lapse and even makes Jigsaw getting Zep's photo look not so glaring.
Even though it still totally is.
Other than those gigantic plotholes,
this is still an amazing movie that stands the test of time a
freaking DECADE later. Lord, I'm getting old. Oozing with dramatic
tension and genuine intrigue, it stands head and shoulders above
pretty much every major studio horror movie in recent times. For
being extremely low budget it never shows its seams for a moment,
really making you wonder why some movies that literally cost over one
hundred times this one look like complete shit.
The acting was top notch all around,
but what else would you expect from the caliber of actors they had
available for this thing? If you wanted to get really nitpicky you
could single out Whannell's performance as lacking, but in the horror
genre that's easily overlooked and he gets major props for his
reaction at the end when Gordon goes off the deep end.
I'd say this movie is still as
innovative as ever, maybe even moreso when you look at how poorly so
many other movies (and yes, I'm counting some of its own sequels in
that) have tried to copy it and failed. Even Jigsaw's supernatural
ability to predict the future in explicit detail was reigned in here,
coming off as just a very intelligent villain firmly rooted in
reality. Very high recommendation even if you aren't a horror fan,
as this movie is surprisingly bloodless when you stop to think about
it. Setting the bar this high for a franchise leaves some big shoes
for the sequels to fill, so let's see how Lionsgate chose to follow
up this highly unique movie.
Find out here!
Find out here!
No comments:
Post a Comment