When is too much - too much? - A Saw question...

It’s no secret that I like all kinds of movies. Okay, I lie. My interest in action flicks has largely died off. I like something that makes me think, contemplate things from a different angle, or transports me to another world all together. I adore clever writing. When it comes to horror movies, I am more interested in the psychological horror flicks. For example, “Seven” was one of my all time favorite movies. Having a very small background in Latin, I found “Event Horizon” fascinating as well.

“Saw” was one of my favorite contemporary horror movies. The first film was one of those where, by the end, there was rarely a person in the audience who didn’t inhale sharply as the enemy revealed himself. It wasn’t as much a horror flick as an over the top crime drama.

I also truly appreciated the fact that the director and one of the actors wrote the original story and worked the concept into a blockbusting, cult following, success. I love to see ‘the little guy’ make it big.

That said, the second Saw film was disappointing to say the least. The third seemed to return to the original concept a bit more and that helped.

As the movies went on, you learned more and more about the fascinating villain.

That said – I believe the series is dead. Milked for all it’s worth, I truly hoped the Saw V would be the final movie. The ending didn’t seem to agree with me, but I was okay with an open ending to the series. But now, Saw VI has hit the theaters…

Yes, I’ll probably see it. In fact, I had planned on missing the movie, but was recently offered a free ticket to it, so I won’t turn that down… but somewhere through Saw IV it dawned on me what’s truly frightening about these movies.

It isn’t the gore.

It isn’t the concept of someone watching you and holding you accountable for what you do and fail to do – in their own twisted way.

It’s the fact that there are enough writers out there to continue to think of devices and traps to kill people. In the last film, there was a variation of ‘the Rack’, only instead of pulling the spread eagle victim to pieces, it twisted all the extremities to unnatural angles.

Which begs any thinking person to ask the moral question…. “When do we draw the line between fictional entertainment, and food for psychopaths?”

I don’t leave the theater for Saw movies feeling jumpy. I leave feeling nervous about the people sitting near me.