Just got back from seeing Saw 5.

I really think its got to the point where they need to wrap it up and call it a day, but they really are milking itfor all its worth. Theres nothing left of it and there just holding on by a thread and making extended plots and cliffhangers just to keep people interested.

Its not interesting anymore, its predictable, boring and the franchise has ran its course, it did a long time ago i just dont get why people decide to ruin a franchise.

I actually thaught the first Saw film had a great concept (the whole room thing) and should have just stayed as one film but they dragged it out and now its just gone to rubbish.
Its really predictable, i guessed most the film before it even happend.

Also is it me or are more horror films these days more focused on the gore element rather than focusing on decent plots and actually something worth watching. I just dont feel like horror films nowa days are actually any good, aslong as there is excessive amounts of gore thats ok to them.

Views on this anyone?

I find Saw quite intresting to be frank.

Saw was brilliant because it was simple, but it suffers from Texas Chainsaw Massacre syndrome where bigger is better and gory=scary

Definitely agree with you there. I'm not really a "torture" kind of guy, I understand the artistic expression of torture in films, but I think they take it too far, and try to make it as real as possible...which is borderline sadistic. I think they should have a new rule in the horror film industry. They should skip over all their explicit torture/gore scenes, and see if the film still makes sense and is not a pile of garbage. If so, analyze why it sucks so hard and try to fix it to the point where at least it's semi intriguing.

Edit: I'm not saying take all the explicit gore/torture scenes out, I'm simply saying they should have test subjects that watch the film without these scenes, and see if the person would give a decent review to the film. That way it would show whether or not the only reason someone watches their crappy movie is for the gore/violent images.

Saw 1 thaught was very good. It was both sort of physical and mental they where stuck in a room, following clues, had some back story and they had the whole thing of either sit and do nothing or saw off your foot. It had good elements for just one film.

Now its got to the point though where there draging out pointless storylines to keep the franchise alive and its just gory. Theres not much else to it. It was good, now its just sort of been ruined.

I though saw 1 was actually really quite good. Then I never saw the next 2 and saw saw 4, thought that was good but that the writers were just kinda pulling things out of their ass as they went along.

Still though, the scariest movie to date is Evil Dead, nothing else that has come out is "actually" scary.

Saws I-III were good, but after that...not so much. People seem to be moving horror more towards torture you know? Like these people can take their time and drag it out and that scares some people. but for gore even Freddy and Jason were better than these losers with gallons of fake blood in one sequence.

I agree with the torture side of horror lately.

I Use Hostel as a prime example of this, Also Scar 3D or something like that is coming out soon seems to look very similar to the torture phase going on at the moment

The first Saw movie was good because it was more exciting than scary and still left you things to think about. The other movies had the same concept, but was not as exciting and yeah, you knew what would happend. Not because the other movies was bad, they just don't have the same thrill as the first.

Personally, I'm not one for horror movies, but I think Saw had a good thing going for the first two movies, but probably should have stopped it there. Like Final Destination.

Saw 1 and 2 were excellent. The series quickly went downhill from there.

Saw 4 didn't even make sense until you've seen saw 5, which is basically 90% flashbacks and tying together everything from all the previous saw movies.

I would say "yeah, kill the series", they have gotten dumb, but it has been tradition for me and a few friends to go and see the movie in theaters every year, regardless of how stupid it looked. I wouldn't want to break a tradition like that now.

I've never seen a single one and I don't plan on doing so.

Couldn't agree more about the Saw series, i've seen the first 3, the first one was actually a good movie, but the rest of them sucked, but this isnt just horror flicks, Hollywood is milking just about every franchise they can to make money, for example: Indiana Jones, its a freaking Great trilogy, and i love it to bits, and that is still what i see it as, a trilogy, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a decent movie only with a crappy ending, but it is NOT an Indiana Jones movie in my eyes.

Same goes for Die Hard; Classic action trilogy, greatness at the peak of exellence, but then they had to go and make it all crappy with the new version.

Star Wars is the same, it will always be in my heart as a Trilogy...not a 6 part story...

I have been a huge fan of the Saw series since it began, I thought 2 was great, but it started to get really confusing and seemed to lose focus with three and four.
But 5 really tied up the loose ends and allows the series to start fresh. Sure there were one or two questions left unanswered, but that is to be expected.

I saw it last week, with my only experience in Saw matters being the last third of Saw III or IV (whichever one has the thing where they need to cut into the psycho's brain); I saw that at three in the morning on New Year's Day, not exactly in a state to absorb and comprehend facts. So I came into the movie more or less oblivious, although I'd heard Saw I and II were exceptional.

I believe that horror movies fall into three genres: gorefests (your Jason, Freddy, etc.), slow-building suspense (i.e., a little girl with her hair over her face following you everywhere while you wait for some horror to befall you), and true suspense, where the protagonist(s) must solve a mystery before some awful fate befalls someone. Since I knew the previous Saw movies had centered around an evil genius with a twisted morality, I assumed I would get a true suspense movie in the vein of the Silence of the Lamb series. After all, I reasoned, I knew there were cops looking around in the bit of Saw I had seen, and the killer is capable of building ridiculously complex machines. Cops need to catch someone very smart before it's too late. Perfect.

What I got was a gorefest with a very weak facade of mystery and suspense. The bizarre killing machines I had come to expect (and let me tell you, one in particular--seen near the end--is frankly sickening) were certainly there. However, when those weren't in play, I was presented with a very disorienting narrative that alternated jerkily and unintelligibly between flashback and the present, and there was no mystery whatsoever. The cops are looking for a new killer (because there has to be a new one or we can't have more sequels), but the movie spoonfeeds us everything we need to know from square one. I couldn't even identify a protagonist, since the cops were idiots, the victims were assholes, and the new killer--whose every action was plainly displayed--was revealed in the second scene. The only mildly likable character is the old killer, and he's DEAD. His psychology was fairly interesting, but I only got to see it in the flashbacks, and those were mostly focused on the new killer's adaptation to the psychotic lifestyle.

Switching among several character perspectives is a very cool narrative technique, but it's just executed badly here. We switch between the honest cop, the victims (one of whom knows everything about the other four for NO REASON), the new killer, and the new killer in his flashbacks with the old guy. However, between the four perspectives, the entire plot is revealed systematically and there is never any doubt of anything in the audience's mind. Obviously this movie is only here to present gore and the rest is just there to make it seem like a legitimate story. If you're presenting more than one perspective, the story cannot be effective unless something is left out. The individual characters' storylines must all provide separate clues towards some major revelation or else it isn't a story; it's a list of facts read aloud to the audience. Everything is placed right in front of you in Saw V.

There should be no Saw VI. There should be People Trapped in a Series of Rooms Forced to Do Stupid Gross Shit. That's all they want to present to us, and as full as the theater was, that's all people want to see.

*deep breath* Sorry, kind of lost myself there. My expectations are always low when a series reaches #5, but as many good things as I'd heard about the first two, I was still highly disappointed. So, TC... right on.

Saw 1 was all concept. Laud the premise as much as you want, but those "actors" make better clubs or similar bludgeoning tools.
Saw 2 was a step up in every department.
Saw 3 was the best in the series because it was technically proficient. Getting past the "been there, done that" feel, it's rather easily the best of the series.
Saw 4 renders the initial trilogy moot, which is pretty impressive in the "I can't believe how stupid you people are" sort of way.
Saw 5 is entirely unnecessary. It's basically a celebration of the superior first three films, examining every sharp angle that made the first three movies worthwhile, and then sanding it down to a blunt curve.

Has anyone else realized that the Saw movies attract TV deadites? In Saw 5 alone is Dexter's girlfriend (Julie Benz) and that guy from Little Mosque on the Prairie and 24 (Carlo Rota). Saw VI is suppose to have Charisma Carpenter from Angel and Buffy too.

No series can ever possibly be good after four sequels in as many years.

Why do we need to know the method to a killer's madness? What happened to killers in movies who killed just because they were insane and they thought it was fun? I'm sick of watching horror movies where they have a reason for killing people that the writers try to make sound reasonable in a completely psychotic way. I came to see tons of blood and tons of guts, not delve into the psyche of a mass murderer. I don't care if he's deranged because mommy and daddy kicked the crap out of his puppy because he left his bike in the driveway.

Love the series, just like most everyone here. However, it's gotten to the point where they're beating on a dead horse. It should've ended with Saw IV and Jigsaw's death, not kept right on trucking with random-new-apprentice-turned-Jigsaw. Quite frankly, I think this one is just a gore-fest version of Saw III, with Amanda running around and killing everyone, because she figured she was right about them not deserving the gift of life. Sure, a new killer was an interesting twist, and Amanda going nuts was also cool, until she got Jigsaw killed. Massive WTF moment there, for sure. I haven't seen Saw V yet, but I will on Saturday, and I will go in hopeful, and, from what I've read, leave disappointed. Yay, four bucks down the drain.

Let's first get out of the way that Saw isn't technically a member of the traditional horror genre. It and other movies like Hostel are part of a new sub-genre some are calling "Torture Porn".

In any case, I've liked all the Saw movies so far. Yeah they've gotten progressively less interesting, but I still loved all five of them. As time has gone on the gore has been ramped up and the story has been downplayed a bit, but the twists to me are still pretty damn good.

Next year supposedly marks the final film in the series, and I look forward to seeing the end of what has so far been a great franchise.

Saw 1 was brilliant
Saw 2 was great
Saw 3... Not that good
Saw 4 never saw,
Saw 5 Ur kidding? They are actually milking the franchise that badly

Torture in horror films is a new phenomenon? I take it you guys haven't seen anything from the 1970s.