... Okay, and I am going to be brushing up quite a bit on Death, too, in this topic.

(Note: If you do not want the entire plotline of Saw revealed to you, then read no further in this topic. Epic spoilers ahead.)

....... You know, it must be some sort of communicable disease; in all of my life before the time I had ranted on these forums like a madman even as I was watching the last bit of School Days, I had never once let any movie or video game ruffle my feathers for any reason. The only exceptions that come to mind are 1) when I understandably almost vomited at the ****ed-up climax of a sordid little undesirable gem of a movie called Dead End (and subsequently shouted for Lantis to stop the damn VCR and eject the offending contents), and 2) while enjoying the more pleasant viewing experience that is the 2006 version of Charlotte's Web. I came nearly to shedding a few tears at Charlotte's death, but that too is understandable, I would think, although it may not even count since - like I already said - no tears actually broke free of their bonds in the hauntingly blue-green eyes of this one knightly protector. ^_^ However, since the ill-fated figurative trip to the insane asylum that was my viewing of School Days (and remember this was mostly because I had entered into the first episode completely naive and unassuming of the Sodom-and-Gomorrah-ish world of immorality that was waiting at my computer mouse's doorstep), the frequency of such events in which I would take a movie way too seriously - because no matter what, it still is, after all, just that: a movie - or be so disturbed or outraged at its sheer awfulness (Alone in the Dark, Dawn of the Dead, Jay and Silent Bob, thousands of other examples, and, of course, Dead End), is steadily increasing. It's starting to scare me, really.

But I am tempted to reveal my feelings on our most recent trip to the theatre - Saw VI. (Yes, I had said "our", as in both me, SK, and my dark shadow, Id, whom as much as I despise him he is actually well-needed for my bad-movie rantings.) However, it wasn't that I found the latest Saw installment to be bad. I am certainly not a fan of graphic scenes of people being physically or even just mentally tortured, but somehow I find the storyline of the Saw series to be compelling, mostly for its - what Lantis and I call - mind-screw factor. Seriously, I never would have guessed that the killer had been in the room with Adam and the unfortunate Doctor Gordon all along in the first film, nor had I possessed the slightest inkling that the man to replace Jigsaw upon his death - the sneaky self-righteous detective Mark Hoffman - had set himself up to look like a fellow trap victim in the fourth film, seemingly all so that he would have front-row seats to seeing Rigg's certain failure to pass the ol' Jigsaw test of "learn your life lesson or DIE", in addition to giving Rigg's dying person a very vindictive sneer as he would leave the tragic scene. I do enjoy a pleasant romp through the meadows of movie mind-screwing. 'Keeps the ol' SK noggin well-versed in the art of thinking. The actors are usually quite good (which is hard to find in movies of the horror genre, in my opinion), with Tobin Bell having made the perfect Jigsaw, and Amanda was well-played by a lesser-known (formerly) high-school heartbreak kind of actress named Shawnee Smith, whom you might know as the expecting mother in Summer School and the aspiring kid sister detective in Who's Harry Crumb, which are both comedy epics of the 80's. We could have left out a past member of the incredibly craptastic "New Kids on the Block" from the realm of acting, though, I suppose.

It is also true that Saw is coming dangerously close to the textbook definition of what I call "Friday the 13th Syndrome" by hitting its sixth installment and yet showing few signs of coming to a close anytime soon, but at the very least Saw continues a decent story in doing so rather than giving us the same thing over and over in an increasingly dreadfully low-budgeted fashion - a superhuman killer in a hockey mask still so pissed off over his mother's violent end to a vengeful killing spree that he'll live on centuries into the future just to take a crack at a group of potential victims onboard a spaceship. But I digress. This is not the topic's greater point. I suppose I just wanted to explain beforehand why I am fascinated enough by the Saw films to continue watching each new installment, even if of course they themselves do not make for true quality films on the level of Citizen Kane or Casablanca.

I'll get right to the point. There was a scene in Saw VI in particular which, for me, really "makes ya think". Before I describe it in detail, let me first give the synopsis of the movie. It revolves around one William Easton, a medical insurance agent who, like the rest of the corporate human race, believes strongly in money. As with most if not all sellers of any kind of insurance, he'll use any means possible to deny a client of his/her claim, and will not take on a client period if he doesn't believe that doing so will net the company a profit in the long-term. In other words, while this is taking on a fairly dickish persona, he definitely isn't unlike most human beings running any kind of business. But of course, Jigsaw finds out about a particular incident in which Easton did not agree to pay for a client's major operation which would have likely saved him from a debilitating illness or something, having found a trivial fault somewhere in a past claim which could easily have been attributed as accidental or unintentional. So there you have it; a family man dies indirectly due to Easton's greed, and Jigsaw now has him on a hit list as always. Hoffman has been a busy man as of late, filling Jigsaw's lofty shoes while trying to make it look like his most recent victim, the foolhardy Agent Peter Strahm, was playing the part of wanna-be Jigsaw all along and had now disappeared without a trace (which, if you saw the ending of the last movie, you'll know that he pretty much did disappear without a trace). But now Easton has become the victim of perhaps the most elaborate Jigsaw-trademarked setup yet, in which he must make his way through some vague, probably once-abandoned building that house a series of tests for him, all of which basically require that he not only choose among a group of other victims to save, while letting the others be given over to the Reaper, but also/or that he suffer some kind of pain or make some sort of sacrifice in order to save chosen victims. To keep him focused on making the right decisions and following Jigsaw's instructions accordingly, Easton has also been specially outfitted with bombs locked onto each of his wrists and ankles that can only be removed with the passing of each test, 'lest he be due for a more violent, if faster-acting, form of dismemberment. You can sort of see Easton's evolution in actually becoming a better person from enduring Jigsaw's trial, as he is pretty desperate to save his own skin at the expense of fellow trap victim in the first test, but then in the third test he willingly diverts hot steam onto himself just to so much as merely increase the chances of a fellow victim making it successfully through a maze of open steam pipes and freeing herself at the end in time before a device attached to her causes her a fatal head injury. But then, there is the fourth and final test, in which I fully intend to rant as my topic of interest.

This might give you a clear picture of the events I am about to describe (above-said events that got me in a bit of a reflective mood as I later went to sleep that night) ->


Yeah, you can easily tell that this is pretty much going to suck. No matter what Easton does, he will have to settle for the greater fraction of people whose lives he unwillingly holds in his hands to be killed. Only two of the six can live past the next few moments, and Easton will have to permanently disfigure his hands through a no-doubt painful impalement just to achieve that much. Man, Hoffman is a total dick.

... But this is what happens, and I must admit that it got to me sort of emotionally. Once Easton entered the room where the six victims on the happy-go-lucky little merry-go-round of DOOM (don't worry; I'm being sarcastic about the "happy" part) were waiting for him, they all awoke from their unconscious stupor, and all including Easton realized what was about to happen to them, courtesy of Jigsaw's standard-issue voice recording. And so the minute the merry-go-round contraption started turning, each of the victims fell to two things: 1) panicked fear, which is completely rational, don't get me wrong, and 2) the worst instance of human barbarism I have seen in all six Saw movies yet. They actually started fighting over who should have to die. The tactics employed therein ranged from: 1) begging to be spared (which in and of itself is not so terrible, I can concede, even considering the nonexistent possibility of a win/win situation here), 2) making up lies about the the other five victims in order to sway Easton's mind to letting the accused victim die, and 3) worse yet, demanding that a certain person is not as important to save as the life of the accuser, and therefore deserves to die over him/her. It isn't helping that Easton has a pretty narrow time limit to even make his choices anyway, as the merry-go-round just keeps turning 1/6 of a revolution every few moments to line one of the six victims up with a shotgun poised ready to turn his/her lungs into Swiss cheese. How can the man be allowed ample mental preparation time to decide which ones to save? True; he knows each of these six people well enough, as I believe they were all underlings of his hired specifically to find loopholes and falsehoods in client information submitted to the insurance company so that insurance can be denied to clients when the need for it actually comes, and therefore money can be saved. Still, how is a man to choose between life and death for other people? It's a pretty serious situation that no human should ever have to face in my eyes. If I had been William Easton, I know I would live to regret what I had done no matter which two of the six I had sacrificed my two working hands to save - it still means that four others had died because of me. As Raquel from Wild Arms 4 had once appropriately termed it, the "ugly need for self-preservation" is what made this scene so truly horrifying. Easton was in serious moral disarray by now; you could tell he was really broken up every time he finally let go and allowed the gun to fire off into a victim's chest. Having his hands impaled was far less painful to him, it was obvious. As for the victims, well, ... I can't believe even in the dire circumstances that they so aggressively demanded for everyone but themselves to be sacrificed. I think the most self-centered person (which in turn outraged me the most) in the group was the very last one to go, mainly because of the way he had acted so angrily at the fact that - of the last two victims, only one of whom Easton was at liberty to save - Easton had chosen the fifth victim over the sixth. I don't know; maybe it was the full awareness that the fifth victim was an attractive young woman, ... and Easton chose to save her over the man, and so that had really scandalized the sixth victim with a grievous sense of gender-prejudice or something. I really don't think that sex was anywhere near Easton's mind during that time, though. He had just as much reason to be frantic and unable to think rationally as any of the victims did, in my eyes. Either way, someone was bound to be pissed at him when he used up the last of his two get-out-of-jail cards. I really just can't believe that anyone in real life would spend his final moments just plain being so ticked off at someone who was made just as much a victim in the circumstances as he was. Once Easton opted to save the fifth victim, the sixth was all like, "Whaaaaat?!! How dare you choose her over me!" More literally, he had demanded that Easton keep his eyes focused on his face as the shotgun would fire. I believe his exact words were, "No! You don't look away from me! You stand right there and watch me as I die, you #$%@&!"

... Seriously? Can you really be thinking something like that when your life is just seconds away from being over? Making someone else suffer in some way? And no, this isn't the same as some heroic effort to take the evil villain who has you at his mercy down with you for the noble purpose of stopping him from hurting anyone else or something like that. No, the sixth victim can't be anything short of a conceited and selfish jackhole if he acts that way even in the face of death. I know that sounds judgmental, but sorry, that just isn't right. It isn't like Easton could help what was happening. No matter what, only two people were getting out of this one alive; even if this wasn't a timed trap and Easton had all the time in the world to figure out a way to free everyone somehow, I sincerely doubt he could have. Remember, this is Jigsaw we're dealing with. He plans things out pretty darn carefully, with probably a 1 in 5,000 mistake ratio at best. (The only flaw I can think of in all of the movies is Strahm's escape from the trap meant to drown him, but hey, who in this world can expect that anyone would have enough balls to stab himself in the throat with a pen in order to create a pathway for oxygen?)

In any event, my ultimate point is: sure, I would like to think that, unlike the six shotgun victims in this movie, I would have made the - ideally - "Sarah's Knight" kind of choice and willingly offered for Easton to immediately forego any consideration of me and save one of the others, were I myself in that situation. Had I been that last victim in particular, once Easton had pressed the button that sealed my fate but spared that of the girl before me, I want to think that I could have been happy with just that much (at least she's going to be able to live, right?), and simply and quietly ask that Easton and the other two survivors not force themselves to look my way as the trigger is being pulled. Not that I have given it much thought .... okay, I really have - but I think one of the more noble things one can do while facing execution is to hope that no one will actually look at him/her when it happens, in order to spare them the distinct possibility of the image of your death haunting them for a very long time, especially if it is going to be a violent death you are about to suffer. ... If the gun is aimed my head instead of my heart, then I definitely do not want anyone to look. Strange as it will sound, somehow you could substantially measure the amount in which I would have been more at peace with the mere fact that I would be taking a bullet through the heart instead of, well, you know, ... losing a head.

But still, unless something like that actually happens to me, how am I to know for sure how I would react? As I said, ideally I want to believe very much that I would without hesitation assume the part of the valiant and self-sacrificing protector that I like to portray myself as around the Internet. After all, assuming I am the first victim for Easton to decide on, then if I offer right then and there to be sacrificed, then the chance of living for any one of the other people involved immediately raise from 2 in 6 to 2 in 5. There's no harm in not wanting to die, certainly, but still, even at the expense of another human being? How are you any better or worse than the others?

*sigh* Sorry, there is probably no need at all to become so serious over, once again, something that will probably happen to extremely few people, if anyone ever, in real life. But sometimes it just feels to better to openly reveal the kinds of things that you are thinking on the inside, you know?


Worse yet, it wasn't just that particular scene that got me thinking of the notion that maybe a lot of humans really are just horrible, awful people, no matter how much faith you might want to have in them. On a more minor point, it was also the way that the film ended which got to me. I should know by now that no installment in the Saw series is ever going to end happily. In fact, the most cheerful point of any final ten minutes in a Saw movie was in the fifth one, in which two (yes, two! Not one or zero!) victims appeared to leave the featured storyline Jigsaw-test of the film, alive. But even then, that one light cloud just got shot down right after with Strahm's inability to escape Hoffman's fun little collapsing-wall-room. Seriously, I don't why I even thought for one split-second that Strahm was going to make it when he climbed to ceiling and tried to kick in the overhead grating. In anything, the signature ending music score that plays in every Saw movie's tension-releasing final moments had already kicked in; Strahm was history. And it isn't any better in Saw VI - Easton just bites the dust in the end anyway because of the completely dick-headed actions of one kid. It turns out that the wife and son of the afore-mentioned cancer victim whom Easton had once denied insurance to were both being held along with Easton's sister in a small prison at the end of Easton's trials, .... along with a tank of hydroflouric acid and a wall switch marked "live"/"die" that the mother and son had immediately noticed upon waking up in the prison.

As any typical Cracked.com article would have been sure to have written: you see where this is going.

So, even after all that Easton had already been through, even as he stumbled into the final room, emotionally exhausted but still alive and having passed all of his tests in time, Jigsaw (or Hoffman) had still given the ultimate decision as to where Easton would survive or not into the hands of the family whom he had previously wronged in his life. A tape from Jigsaw made it clear: the mother and son could either forgive him for having let their loved one die once long ago, or kill him out of vengeance. .... I would like to make several points as to why it is only so OBVIOUSLY right that they opt to let him live:

1. All three prisoners appeared to have had a clear viewing of everything Easton had gone through in the last hour, through the use of monitors. If I recall, they could even hear everything he or anyone with him during his trials were saying, so I think it was evidenced enough that, in spite of the fact that indeed Easton had done a terrible thing earlier in life by refusing to pay for that one man's much-needed treatment, he had changed throughout the course of these tests. I am sure he would left a much better person, "appreciating life more", as Jigsaw would always say. Therefore, not even the "don't-spare-his-life-because-he-is-still-a-bad-man" excuse would have worked here, much less have been relevant.

2. These two had him completely at their mercy. Taking someone's life isn't a good or pleasant thing no matter what, but still, there is a profound difference between, say, one knight slaying another in battle who was also armed and actively fighting back, and then one's dumping hydrofluoric freaking acid into the body of a helpless person practically on their knees and pleading to be spared.

3. Easton's sister was also begging for the mother-and-son pair's mercy as well as Easton.

4. In doing so, you are killing someone very brutally in the sight of that someone's loved one.

5. You had plenty of time to think this one through, weigh the pros and cons, and come to a clear decision on what would be right and what would be wrong. You yourself were not being accosted, harassed, or "tested" by Jigsaw/Hoffman in any way like Easton was. There is no excuse for acting rashly in a moment of panic or some other surge of emotion - what you would not normally do if you were your true self, so to speak, at the moment.

6. Still trying to make an enemy of someone or everyone in a situation like this - in which people are dying all around you and fear is rampant among everyone - is just an inherently irrational and dickish thing to do. It's just like being that resident jerk in the cast of victims in any standard horror film where an unknown killer is stalking among you and erasing names from the human race's roll call real fast.

7. Vengeance is always a petty thing.

8. What the hell is wrong with you?

Sure enough, the son just says "Screw you! You die, now!" and pulls the switch over to the side marked "die". A flurry of needles embed themselves into a helpless Easton's back, and the slow, pain-filled, frail-human-body-dismantling, acid-burning-from the-inside-out death begins for him. What would it feel like, being a mere kid in his teens and actually causing that to happen to someone? Dude, whatever he did to your father so long ago, you are ten times as WRONG.

On top of that, if he, his mother, or Easton's sister knew anything about the way Jigsaw operates, then would it have not been only smart to withhold your vengeance for the sake of saving yourself, too? I was actually mildly surprised that killing Easton did not end up meaning that, according to Jigsaw, the mother and son had also failed their own test and therefore a connecting trap in the room would also proceed to kill them as well. ('Much in the same way that Amanda - even as an accomplice to Jigsaw, herself - had failed a test given to her in the third film, in which Jigsaw had hoped that she would be willing to keep one of the victims alive when they had rightfully passed the test they were given).

Seriously, I actually don't know who is worse! Hoffman himself, for slaying three innocent people when they were about to uncover him as the killer; or that kid, being a test victim himself but still wishing for someone else's death.

....Dude, couldn't you have put this in separate parts? It's like I'm reading a damn novel.

It's a movie. Just know that. Saw should have stopped at 3, btw.

Might I direct you to some lulz:



I see your point. And I don't want to look at it as you taking a movie far to seriously as I do taking the situation and applying it to one's self as if it really were to happen. And honestly, I think the majoirty of people today would act EXACTLY the way the movie played out. And I'd hope that I wouldn't be anything like that.

Honestly, if I were strapped to that turntable... I think the only thing I would be able to do was just close my eyes and wait for it all to play out. I wouldn't speak... just sit there with my eyes as shut tight as possible and hold my breath, too scared to do anything else.

As for the teen: OF COURSE he did. If left to the mother, I Easton would have lived. She was a mature woman who has had her whole life to devlope a propper sense of what is right and what is wrong. But some adolecent child? Of course he's going to pull it. I just wish that his mother was able to talk him out of it. And I'm also suprised to hear that those two didn't die for the kids actions.

Um, that's sort what the back button on your browser is for. If you don't want to read something, just ignore the topic. You weren't exactly being forced.


Lol at the vid, Lantis.

And yet you hold a bunch of short story contests, which would amount to the length of this post if everyone did the las ttwo along with the previous few.

Anyway, I've never seen the Saw movies... never really saw what the hype was about, but I don't like horror movies. Too predictable.

Actually, the Saw films aren't predictable at ALL. There's aways some unexpected twist at the end that makes you think, "Holy crap, this entire time?!"

I don't care how good your intuision is. But outside of that, I'm not really a big fan either. Haven't seen any past 3.

I'm surprised that the Saw movies in particular have reeled anyone in as far as SK seems to be.

And it's not a slight to your understanding or mentality.. but I just felt the majority of viewers actually went to see the traps and not the storyline.

As far as the storyline goes.. it's pretty dumb. Dumb as hell, in fact. It's funny that they take one after another of unsuspecting persons for committing 'moral' crimes and throw them through torture regiments.. but the fact they try to personify these people and exclude the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of people JUST LIKE THEM!

Sorry, it's stupid to me. I like that you take an objective stance to the storyline.. obviously the point of the movie is to be as unpredictable as possible so that people can just keep coming back and trying to figure them out before they happen (am I right?).. but that's the whole kit and kaboodle you won't be able to figure them out because they don't give you any clues as say a Murder/Mystery might. These movies keep you absolutely oblivious up until the very end.. it's not even possible of guesswork.

and it's not because of this that I don't like them.. I don't like them because they all end the same. Most die and there's a big twist... the first Saw teased your senses as being one of the first movies to do what it did.. and maybe you went back for the second and the third.. but let's -assume- you knew there would be 6 movies or even 7.. would you even bother? It's not just going down the path of a Friday the 13th movie.. it -is- a friday the 13th movie. Except your 'immortal' superhuman killer isn't Immortal.. he died.. and his 'superhuman' abilities are contraptions (or some might say the fact he could even think up these contraptions) and the fact it's still going? Makes me laugh, honestly. Like I said.. I'm surprised it still reels people in.. but, you've definitely taken the bait: hook, line, and sinker. That's what they wanted, obviously.. you make them money.