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The Seven Habits of Highly Effective TorturersWhy the Saw movies are perfect for middle managers.

By Grady Hendrix
Posted Friday, Oct. 26, 2007, at 1:00 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

The Saw movies are also radically conservative. Like the creaky old Republic serials of the 1930s, they're full of deathtraps, nerve gas, slow-acting poisons, and a complete misunderstanding of how electricity works. But their greatest crime is rejecting the anarchic thrills of the slasher movie in favor of reinforcing modern-day corporate culture. There's always been a vein of reactionary conservatism in slasher films. The Halloween movies are all predicated on the concept of honor killings, with Michael Myers stalking and slaying his sexually active sisters, and the Friday the 13th series is boneheaded reiterations of the sex = death equation. But these movies are also id-tickling celebrations of the chaos that ensues when mindlessly violent monsters are unleashed in controlled environments like summer camps, schools, hospitals, and space stations.

Jigsaw, on the other hand, is a pedant and a bore, a Type A overachiever who is constantly creating "tests" for the other characters and then grading the results. Chaos is his enemy; order and personal productivity are his friends. He's a management drone leading the cast in a team-building exercise, and, even worse, he often speaks through a puppet. In Saw III he uses liquefied pigs, death by car wash, and a tricked-out version of the rack to awaken a grieving father to the magic of forgiveness. It's the liberating figure of the motion picture monster reduced to the status of a self-help guru. And he won't shut up. "Despite all of the advantages and privileges that you were given at birth, you have returned to prison again and again," he scolds one of his victims. "Up until now, you have spent your life among the dead, piecing together their final moments. You're good at this because you are also dead. Dead on the inside," he preaches at another. It's like an endless lecture from your mom.

The Saw movies don't just celebrate traps; they are traps: Fans are lured in with the promise of gore, but they find themselves stuck in their seats, subjected to Jigsaw's endless stream of numbing pseudo-profundities. For many, the most unbearable movie moment of 2005 was a woman's eye being plucked out in Eli Roth's Hostel. For me it was watching one of the New Kids on the Block and the star of Decoys 2: Alien Seduction debate the meaning of life in Saw II. The idea that, in an act of brand loyalty, millions of people are going to line up this weekend and pay money to get a lecture on personal commitment and productivity from a puppet is so horrible, so degrading to the human spirit, that I have to close my eyes and look away. It's absolute torture.

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Grady Hendrix, a New York writer, runs the New York Asian Film Festival.
Still from Saw IV by Steve Wilkie.
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