It was hardly a box-office blockbuster, and it
didn’t win any awards, but no movie from 2004 has generated more buzz
on the part of film fanatics than Saw. Movie message boards are filled with dissections of every
little intricate plot detail. This is a cult phenomenon in the making.
Psychodramas often attract obsessive behavior, but
this movie is a cut above the norm. Two men (Cary Elwes and Leigh Whannell)
awaken in a dilapidated bathroom (a visual image that automatically creates
a chilling effect), but neither knows how it happened. They are chained to
pipes on opposite sides of the room, and, to top it off, a man lies dead in
a pool of blood on the floor between them. Elwes believes that they are the
latest guinea pigs in the games of a psychopath known as Jigsaw. Saw crosscuts between their
futile attempts to escape and ghastly bits of how Jigsaw dispensed with
previous victims while being pursued with obsessive desperation by a cop
played by Danny Glover. The inspiration for the grisly events is obviously Se7en, which may be the most
influential thriller of the last two decades. Saw is dark but entertaining, despite some lapses in logic
and a surprise twist that defies credibility.
The mundane reality of the 2004 docudrama The Hillside Strangler is in
some ways more disturbing than Saw. The Hillside Strangler actually benefits from its low-budget status by never
resorting to exploitative or flashy gimmicks. Howell and Turturro keep
their characters real by playing them as low-life cretins rather than as
the ingenious manipulators generally seen in serial-killer films. Seeing
the monstrous actions of average people is much more frightening.
Frailty (2002) is another
psycho thriller that has been developing a cult following since its failed
theatrical release. Bill Paxton, who stars, also made his feature-directing
debut in this twisted tale of religious fanaticism gone amok. Paxton is an
average Joe who believes that he is receiving messages from God to smite
evildoers, and he forces his two sons to aid in his killings. Frailty is an oddity, and
that is part of its charm.
Few movie psychopaths can top Hans Beckert (Peter
Lorre) in Fritz Lang’s M (1931), the first truly great serial-killer film. Beckert,
a character loosely based on the child-killer of Düsseldorf, commits
such heinous crimes that police mount a massive manhunt that disrupts the
activities of the criminal underworld. The criminals have no choice but to
track him down and bring him to justice in their own way. M is rightly considered one of
the greatest films ever made, and Lorre is extraordinary. A unique film, M was one of Lang’s last
films before he fled the dictatorship of Nazi Germany for the
totalitarianism of Hollywood.
DVDs scheduled for release Tuesday (April 12): Ocean’s Twelve, Hotel Rwanda, The Woodsman, Criminal, Bad Education, and Reconstruction.
This article appears in Apr 7-13, 2005.
