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Saw
Vera's out of town this weekend, so it's time to catch up on movies that she is completely uninterested in seeing. :-)
I've been interested in checking out Saw ever since I heard early rumblings of it last summer. Some were describing it as a close relative to Se7en, but with a more horror-film bent. Sounded right up my alley.
In the end, that turned out to be an apt description of the movie. It's sort of a horror/thriller movie, involving a serial killer who captures people and put them in situations where they have to perform some extreme act in order to stay alive. The movie focuses on two men (played by Cary Elwes and writer Leigh Whannell) who wake up in a dilapidated bathroom together after being captured. They are both chained to opposite walls and in between them is a dead body. Over the course of the movie, they piece together how they got there, how they are connected, and what they need to do to stay alive.
The movie mixes together several elements which I really enjoy. First, it is a fairly claustrophobic movie, focusing on a very small set of characters in an extreme situation (one of the reasons I really liked Panic Room). Second, a lot of it is essentially a puzzle that gets pieced together over the course of the movie, and there are a number of surprising tidbits that crop up along the way to keep things interesting. There are some good, if a bit difficult-to-believe, twists near the end. And some nice gory scenes to tip it back over toward the horror end of the scale.
Overall, I thought the movie was effective and lived up to my expectations. 3/4 stars.