Wow. This movie looks pretty freaky. Apparenlty up there with The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en. I'd reallly like to check this one out. I know it was just released today, but did anyone get a chance to see it?

i didnt get a chance yet but it does look awesome.

I heard it was terrible. But I still would like to check it out.

I saw it today (no pun intedned), and it definetly did not meet my expectations. Weak writing, terrible acting, too complicated a story, and not one frighteneing moment. I must admit the though, the endng really caught me off guard.

Overall, this one was a failure. I wouldn't recommend it.

Yeah, I tend to agree...

The premise was great, but somewhere this movie went drastically wrong.

For the most part, I thought that the first 2/3 of the movie was genuinely a good buildup (although the acting and dialogue was pretty weak), but the STORY itself, built up quite nicely in the first 2/3 of the film.

The last 1/3...well...I don't even really know where to begin. It was completely different from the rest of the film.

This could have been a very, very great horror film, and I realize they were only working with a $1 million budget, but still, this film definitely did not fill its own shoes.

I still want to see the movie though. Mainly for the fact it was shot so cheaply and is making money. From reports:

" Budgeted at less than $10 million, it grossed $18.3 million in its first three days."

I had read where the screenwriter and director (film student classmates) were going to make this in their backyard for $30,000 on 16mm, but were encouraged to find backing, which they obviously did.

That makes the movie interesting to me!

I thought the film was awesome. I loved the idea. I thought the film had a smooth feel to it, like "you will never catch me, but you know this". Hard to explain. You must watch it though.

yeah, MAJOR dissapointment. The story behind it's creaton was cool, and little else. This guy has alot to learn about directing. Now visually he is pretty strong, but knew nothing about directing actors creating arcs and stringing it all togethere.

Several of the actors gave what i would litterally call the worst performances of their career. A greta premise that didnt get it's due. Its made money though, so hopefully they will get another shot, have learned from their mistakes and will turn out something killer next time.
R. Michael

Bad acting, cool ending... Reports said they are making a sequel since it has been making a decent amount of money no mention of James Wan will direct and/or if Leigh Whannel (I think thats how you spell it) will co-write with Wan again or if a new crew will be brought in. Overall I liked it a lot but yes I agree the acting is very poor.

The problem with making a sequel to a movie that made so much money is that it didn't make the money because of the quality of the movie, but by the advertising.

There were advertising this movie since the middle of summer, and it made 48 million. That's not so much with all that advertising you're spending on it.

On top of that, the trick only works once. You hype the movie up, make all your money the first three days of release (the weekend before everyone tells their friends not go see it) and then the movie doesn't do so well.

Now you don't have any hype to carry you to the sequel, or any way to convince people it's going to be worth their time after cheating them out of their money the first time.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: RFranco,

It's a bunch of bull for them to say this is up there with Silence of the Lambs and Seven.
This film sucked. It had great potential, but it didn't came off as scary, only gory. There's lots of things that separated this film from the two above. Some of these things include, cast, writing, directing, and acting. geez, the ending was good, but it did not redeem poor writing and acting.

D-

quote:

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Now you don't have any hype to carry you to the sequel, or any way to convince people it's going to be worth their time after cheating them out of their money the first time.

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I completely agree. Unless there is a new director, new screenwriter, or i have a hot chick to take with me, i doubt i'll see a sequel.

I hated Saw! So much! If sh*t had sex with it's cousin, and produced some ugly, retarded drooling piece of sh*t offspring, that misfortunate little bastard would be Saw! It tried way too hard to be twisted and ended up being gimmicky, made the HUGE mistake of casting Cary Elwes in a role that would be made out of cardboard except cardboard is three-dimensional! On top of that the ending (SPOILER WARNING), through some sad last-minute flashback, revealed the killer to be a lobotomy patient! How could a person with a frontal lobotomy plan and execute such detailed murders? And don't even get me started on that lame-ass flashback within a flashback thing. The whole thing should have gone straight to video, gathering dust in some stank blockbuster. The only movie that I actually requested a refund for. Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb! This thing could reach on its tiptoes and still not come close to being in the same zip code as a masterpiece like Se7en. Saw just pissed me off, plain and simple. I know they were shooting with a low budget (relatively), but that's all the more reason they should've put a stronger emphasis on script and character development than gore and some horror geeks idea of cool. James Wan is right up there with Joel Schumacher and Michael Bay for Directors I'd Like to Slap. Damn.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Noirboy101,

This film was ****!

Ive read about it for awhile now cause Leigh Whannel was on TV here in Australia as a really lame Film critic on a kids show. They got very lucky with this break, but unfortunately its a piece of ****.
Leigh should really stick to kids shows as he cant act at all, and not much better as a writer.
Sorry to sound so harsh, im normally very patriotic to Aussie films, but its all hype.
Comparing Saw to Silence of the Lambs is like comparing Gigli to 8 1/2. Not in the same ball park.

i quite enjoyed it. I thought it was going to be a piece of sh*t, but i was even surprised that i liked it. I normally hate the stupid corny halloween nonsense sh*t that comes out, but this wasn't corny or nonsense to me. The story was better then expected. I didn't quite like Cary's acting all too much, but i think Leigh did great (in some scenes). The atmosphere was my favorite element of the movie. wonderful.

Man, I liked it a lot. It was a mix between Se7en and Phone Booth and, like Phone Booth, I thought it was really underrated. The film deserves more credit that it has gotten.

you guys are f*cking harsh

this movie was excellent,
remember most of these actor's did the movie for free and the overall budget was like $1,000,000

and you start winging about things like the sound mixing?

make of find a better one under the same conditions and and then bag it

Just because some actors worked for free and it had a low budget does not automatically make it good. Saw had so many loopholes it was like swiss cheese made out of celluloid. The direction was terrible, and they relied way too much on color correction (that green tint was lifted almost directly from Seven, along with most of the lines; "I don't care if you cover yourself in peanut butter", "He only lived two blocks from here", "Sick of those who don't appreciate their blessings"). Answer me this: how the hell are we supposed to believe that the killer lay motionless on the floor for hours without either of the two people noticing his breathing? How are we supposed to believe that Zep, who works in a hospital and has posion coursing through his veins, would not go straight to the hospital while the killer is trapped in the room? How are we supposed to believe that a successful doctor lives in a house with exposed brick walls?
The movie does not work. That's all there is to it.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Noirboy101,

I'm with JW, I thought this film was pretty good. But then I went in with no expectations whatsoever apart from a loose recommendation from a friend for being kinda cool and that things in it would make me laugh (which they did, the guy on the bike etc), if I'd have gone in after hearing all that hype and comparisons to silence of the lambs and se7en i think I would have come away a bit dissapointed too.

But then, it is kinda your fault for having expectations and buying into hype..

This was a small budget film which did well at the festivals so managed to get a release, you should have seen past the hype for what it really was so your expectations were more realistic.