Saw, Scrutinized

So that you may go forth and enjoy this bit of wonder, if you quite reasonably have passed on the often-negligible pleasures of Saw to date, here is a comprehensive explanation. I can tell you all about it because I sat down yesterday and watched them all in order. Unlike lesser souls, I didn't throw up. I even ate a big plate of potato pancakes whilst watching.

Saw I
Also known as: The One with Actual Famous People
Notable quotable: "Would you murder a mother and a child to save yourself?"
Lessons to be learned: Danny Glover is really the man who'll try anything twice.

This is pretty much the No Exit of horror movies, because you basically are locked in a grody room with a whiny preppy doctor (Cary Elwes, looking rather fleshy) and an annoying hipster and neither of them will shut up. Don't feel bad for the annoying hipster! He's a producer of Saws I through MMCVI. Only one of them gets out of the room though. This scary, but sort of alluring killer named Jigsaw has put them there. The thing that's important to know about Jigsaw is that he tells you the rules, and if you don't listen, then you die. If you just do what he says, everything works out fine and you don't die! Remember this, it comes in handy in life. (No?)

Wonkery famously goes wrong in movie franchises—as when Star Wars took a turn for endless space-congressional politics. But going wonk in a horror movie? Ludicrous, hilarious, wonderful.

Saw II
Also known as: The One With the Guy Who Was Famous Until His Brother Sucked All the Fame Out of Him.
Notable quotable: "We have a human race that doesn't have the edge or the will to survive."
Lessons to be learned: When someone stabs you with a hypodermic, just shoot them. Immediately!

Donnie Wahlberg's son and some other people get kidnapped, and they pretty much all turn against each other. This is a pretty good movie actually, because it's not just people stupidly wandering through warehouses with their guns out. Also good for those who enjoy the prisoner's dilemma. In this one, it turns out one of the kidnapped people is Jigsaw's apprentice. And then Donnie Wahlberg refuses to follow Jigsaw's instructions at every step and so he ends up in captivity himself. Idiot!

Saw III
Also known as: The One that is Basically the Aliens 3 of the Franchise
Notable quotable: "The body is a miraculous creation."
Lessons to be learned: You know what's scary? Horror.

This one is like super-confusing but basically Jigsaw kidnaps this nice Iranian doctor lady (Bahar Soomekh, who was on 24 that one time) and makes her perform brain surgery on him. Yes, he really does have the cancer! Saw III also has a scene where a guy nearly gets drowned in rotting pig guts which nearly made this daring soul who watched the first four movies back-to-back dry-heave. I guess if this movie is about anything, it's about Jigsaw's lady apprentice, who looks like Molly Shannon but even scarier! She ends up dead because she just can't give the victims a chance to live, violating the Jigsaw standards policy. This movie has some problems. Are these moral dilemmas given to the trapped actually moral dilemmas? Not really. They're the same strawman trash used in the arguments about U.S. national torture policy. Ha, go figure.