‘A bit like meditation’: why Saw is my feelgood movie

3 hours ago 10

I was petsitting recently for a white suburban family, with the typical streaming habits therein. They had two kids; their most-watched shows, according to the history that showed up on the screen, were Bluey for the kids and The Office for the adults. When they came home from their weeklong trip, they would’ve found their watch history upheaved. The Bingos and Michael Scotts all erased by Saw I, Saw II, Saw III, Saw IV, Saw V, Saw VI, Saw 3D, Saw Spiral, Saw Jigsaw and, finally, my new favourite, Saw X.

I was obsessed with the Saw franchise well before I ever saw it. At 11, as Jigsaw puppets became Halloween costumes, I went to bed each night convinced Jigsaw was going to scoop me up in a van because the word “hell”a popped into my head. By 13, I looked up every film on Wikipedia and read through each trap with terrified excitement. By 14, I drank my first can of Stella and typed Saw II into YouTube, watching it in 12 installments. It was utterly horrifying. And so, so, so much fun.

I am now 31 and have seen every film so many times I could count on both hands – which Jigsaw would sever finger by finger – how many times I’ve seen them. Somewhere along the way, Saw became my feel-good film.

The reasons why are mostly shallow and unsophisticated. It’s not like I care for the nonsensical storyline, or the dubstep editing, or the ham acting. No one’s exactly raving about Saw’s mise-en-scene. Its morality – the murderer keeps insisting he’s not actually murdering anyone – is deeply specious, and it’s never fully clear whether the film-makers are aware of this or not. But I obviously do not care. Just as I don’t care if a rollercoaster has any “worldbuilding”. I just want it to go whoosh and loop the loop.

The one thing about Saw – other than its asinine-cop B-storylines – is that I’m guaranteed not to be bored. I just cannot tap out while watching a man in a revolving crucifix, his bones crushed one by one, or a woman cutting off her leg and extracting her bone marrow. Even typing that is making me squirm.

When I first started watching these films, I looked away; now I stare them down blankly. I think watching horror is a bit like meditation, or doing planks. You go through waves of discomfort and the feeling that you can’t go on, but then you do. You subject yourself to something counterintuitive and unpleasant, and then you discover that you are still there at the end of it.

It feels sort of embarrassing to dignify Saw with any kind of seriousness – and to say this in light of the films – but I’ve struggled with suicidal ideation my entire life. I think I am so benumbed that I am utterly beyond pain, but then I watch Saw and find myself wincing. As a suicidal person, I would undoubtedly qualify as one of Jigsaw’s “victims”. He would say that I don’t appreciate life.

But when I watch Saw, I think: Thank God I’m not stuck at the bottom of a vat, with liquefied pig carcasses drowning me.

Annoyingly, life is all about learning to let go: of others, of ego, of the flesh. Martyrs, a much better film in every way, takes those ideas seriously, treating suffering and transcendence as something profound and spiritual. But it’s no fun. Saw takes the sacrifice of life at its absolute stupidest and turns it into a game. No matter how much you think you want to die, you probably do have a bit of survival instinct left. “Live or die” is the Jigsaw villain’s catchphrase, and of course, living is much harder. It requires constant attention and struggle. But that’s the choice almost everyone makes.

As I watch Saw, I put myself in the victims’ positions every single time: what would I do if I had 60 seconds to cut into my eye or die? I’d rather not answer, but if I had to, had to, I think I might choose to dig right in.

If on another day I’d feel like throwing the scalpel down and just giving up, I’ll put on Saw once again, and remember what it costs to choose otherwise.