What Went Right: Saw
By Shalimar Sahota
February 9, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Back in 2004, I was studying while working at an independent multiplex cinema. On October 1st, one of my lessons was cancelled, so it meant that I could catch the first showing of Saw. I recalled seeing huge billboard posters for the film, with the tagline, “Dare you see Saw?” I took up the dare. I only realized my mistake moments later when angry parents were chasing me from a children’s playground.
Supposedly the culprit when it comes to “torture porn” (blame the sequels), Saw is often labelled as a horror film, yet it’s more a gory thriller. However, there’s not really as much blood as you’d expect. A noticeable lack of on-screen stabbing and sawing means that the sound is ramped up to uncomfortable levels. Director James Wan had to be creative with the low budget. The money isn’t there to show someone being killed by multiple shotgun blasts, but you can get away with effectively showing the outcome.
James Wan and Leigh Whannell met while studying at the Royal Melbourne Institute Of Technology in Australia. They wanted to make their own films together, and for their first film decided on keeping the premise simple enough so that they could shoot on a low budget. Wan gave the idea to Whannell about two guys chained to opposite ends of a bathroom. One was Dr. Lawrence Gordon (who would eventually be played by Cary Elwes); the other, Adam (whom Whannell would go on to play). These characters were stuck, had no idea how they got there and lying between them was a body. Whannell started writing the script for Saw in 2001. It took him around nine months to finish the first draft, trying to work out why they were chained up and who put them there. He came up with a story that involved a deranged serial killer named Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), who abducted his wayward victims only to have them play dangerous games as they attempted to win their lives back. A bit like playing that old party favourite Truncate Twister.
Intending to film Saw themselves, they had saved up $5,000 of their own money. Their agent (the film’s eventual executive producer), Stacey Testro, suggested that they try to secure some funding to do the film properly. After spending a year to see if anyone would finance their film, no deal ever got close to being finalised. So Testro suggested that they take their script to Hollywood.
What’s interesting here is that rather than just submit a script, they used the $5,000 they had saved to film a small segment to help give a flavor of what Saw would be like. The result was a short film which involved Whannell playing a character named David, telling the story of how he’d been captured and forced to play a deadly game. It was frighteningly dark and successfully put across the tone of what would become the feature film. Shot on 16mm, Wan converted the footage to DVD, so when producers and production companies received the script for Saw, they got a short film as well. If the duo hadn’t shot the short film then they may still be looking for funding, for in nearly every instance people watched the DVD first, simply because it was quicker than reading a script and it made people want to read the script.
It got them noticed, as Wan and Whannell revealed that offers came in from the likes of DreamWorks and Gold Circle, trying to lure them in with a big budget. But they refused, for there was no guarantee that Wan would direct. There was also the possibility that Whannell would be replaced by a bigger actor and that his script would be rewritten to include car chases, sex scenes and explosions. Producers Gregg Hoffman, Oren Koules and Mark Burg of Evolution Entertainment saw their short film and loved it. They read the script and loved that also. They made a deal with Wan and Whannell, offering them a low budget, but full creative control. They accepted. Hoffman, Koules and Burg formed genre arm Twisted Pictures and Saw became its first film.
Shooting began in September 2003. With hardly any time for prep or rehearsals, the majority of the film was shot in a warehouse in just 18 days. The low budget shows in quite a few scenes - a car chase has cars that are obviously stationary and a police station is suffering from a severe lack of light bulbs. An editing suite was set up in Wan’s apartment where he rushed to edit the film so that it could play as part of the Sundance Film Festival’s Park City at Midnight section.
It premiered there in January 2004, with Whannell recalling how two women walked out during its first screening, saying that they just “couldn’t handle it.” While walkouts would signal that a film is destined for disaster, the reasoning here only got people talking about Saw. Wan was later told that the cut he delivered at Sundance was “too intense.” Lionsgate moved in quickly before the competition could take notice and actually picked the film up for worldwide distribution just days before it even screened at Sundance.
Saw works because Whannell’s script is absolute dynamite with a unique concept. A lot of the time, we the audience are as clueless as the main characters. It keeps you guessing with many twists and turns, and audiences love their surprise twisty endings, which often contribute to hot word-of-mouth. The final eight minutes are absolutely phenomenal, with a reveal that causes the viewer to reassess the whole film. Only then do we realize that we’ve been had.
Also unlike most horror/thriller films where we just accept that the crazed killer is crazy (“motives are incidental” are they?), Jigsaw was dangerously different and an integral part to Saw’s success. Although he’s rarely seen in the film, his presence is felt throughout, via his voice and that tricycle-riding puppet. “Most people are so ungrateful to be alive,” says Jigsaw to one of his victims. He places his victims in these games in the hope that their experience will help them gain a different outlook on life. Unfortunately, most of them don’t survive long enough to change that outlook. Those that do must pay a price for their freedom. As we’re told, Jigsaw “finds ways for his victims to kill themselves.”
It’s debatable, but a good chunk of his victims are sinners and this is also interesting. Who exactly are the audience supposed to side with here? The immoral victim? Or Jigsaw? Well, they’re both in the wrong, right? The character of Detective Sing would be the main exception here, but one could argue that these people deserve to die and that Jigsaw is just trying to rehabilitate them. He wants his victims to appreciate the life that they have. Should they fail their game, what’s the loss? Might as well give Jigsaw a police badge and tell him to carry on administering his own brand of justice. Okay, I don’t really believe that, but the film splits audiences on Jigsaw and his motives. While some may see him as a sympathetic serial killer, it’s worth noting that he will kill if he has to. In one scene, Jigsaw attempts to kill two characters through "his own" actions. Another thing that separates Saw is that the killer actually manages to get away with it! How many times does that happen?
Saw had a reported production budget of $1.2 million. Wan revealed that only after the franchise was over did he find out that the film was shot on a budget closer to $700,000. It was only when Lionsgate picked it up that the budget spilled over $1 million, as they tweaked it to the film it is today.
With the film in Lionsgate’s hands, they decided to trial it out in the UK first, opening on October 1st 2004. Playing on the “intense” vibe the film had generated, they even went with the tagline “Dare you see Saw?” as a way of inviting potential audiences to test their nerves. It worked, for it opened at #2 with a decent gross of £1.23 million. Converted to dollars, it had already managed to make its production budget back. The second week saw only a miniscule drop, as it retained the same position with a take of £1.03 million. It didn’t take long for Saw to become a sensation and over the coming weeks when working at the multiplex, I began to witness the effect of strong word-of-mouth, as the film’s late night screening began to sell out every single night! To cope with the demand, the decision was made to move the film from a small 100-seat screen into a slightly bigger 156-seat screen.
The film opened in the US a few weeks later on October 29th and was already in profit, having earned over £6 million in the UK. It reached #3 at the US box office with an opening weekend take of $18.2 million. It had managed to accumulate $55.1 million in the US alone. Add in the $47.9 million earned overseas and Saw had grossed $103 million worldwide. Given the huge return on investment, the next obvious step was to fast track a sequel.
Saw spawned sequels that were released yearly, reaching its conclusion with the seventh instalment, Saw 3D, which was released in October 2010. While Whannell co-wrote the second and third films, Wan didn’t direct any of the sequels. They both remained as executive producers on each film in the franchise. I found Saw II to be equally impressive, but the following sequels failed by their mere existence. It turned into a violent soap opera as they tried to give additional characters back stories while the focus shifted towards more elaborate traps with more elaborate death scenes. It became less about redemption, one of the unique factors about the original film. Instead it was gore for gore’s sake. Wan himself admitted that with so many sequels, “the storyline has gone completely to the extreme and has become convoluted.” Two spin-off video games were also released.
Other films tried to capitalise on its success, such as Hostel, Captivity and The Collector, playing with the idea of inventive death scenes, and traps. They also tried to out-saw Saw with their car chases, sex scenes and explosions. It wasn’t long before the phrase torture porn was coined. Whannell himself was happy to have Saw mentioned in an episode of The Sopranos.
As a remarkable little film exceeding everyone’s expectations, that it wasn’t filtered through the studio system meant that Saw was as close to Wan and Whannell’s vision as the budget would allow. How refreshing it was to see something original and genuinely clever. It’s just a shame that its reputation has been tarnished by a plethora of sub-standard sequels and imitators; yet this in itself merely highlights Saw as one of the most influential films of the last decade.