Homework Movies Saw Series (2004 - 2011)

"I want to play a game."

Sitting in a dark room, sometimes the lights flicker on and there are puzzles to solve on the walls with clues to the next puzzle. This is what it takes for me to get ready to watch this series of movies known as Saw. In 2004 Director James Wan and Writer/Actor Leigh Whannell began a journey with their franchise starting entry into the life and death of reported serial killer named Jigsaw, played by Tobin Bell in every film in the series. Over the next 7 years at Halloween you came to expect to see a Saw movie coming out depicting some sort of violence carried out by it's own victims.

Each of the subsequent movies connects victims and their killers to another "Game" or sequence of events in the previous movies until the Final Chapter, where after several months of investigation, the accomplice to Jigsaw's masterminded crimes of imprisonment and torture is put down, not by the law, but to the other "rehabilitated" persons under the tutelage of Jigsaw is complete.

From the drug users, adulterous doctors to the criminal judge that didn't give a criminal a worthy sentence for murder, no one that has a disregard for human life is without reprieve. By the time we get to the fourth installment of the series, we learn that on top of an inoperable cancer, Jigsaw and his wife lost their child due to one of the first victims in the puzzle that Jigsaw devised. With a death sentence like cancer, you get the impression that Jigsaw wants to see people living their lives with better intentions.

From a business standpoint, these movies made Lionsgate a very large amount of money. The 1st movie was made for only 1.2 Million dollars and grossed over 55 million in America alone. Built on a good business model, the series was made on a very limited budget and was released during a season where it was expected to do well and it didn't disappoint. From beginning to end the series gave just enough information to get the audience interested and left enough time between movies to keep them waiting, salivating for more.

"If you're good at anticipating the human mind. It leaves nothing to chance"

That statement describes the fans of this series as much as it is a quote from John BKA Jigsaw to one of his disciples of torture. From the first movie to the second, there was a huge following for each movie afterward. Audiences bought tickets and waited in lines for hours before the movies started during the Halloween season in costume some times. It wasn't hare to tell the victims from the mastermind. A lot less blood on the Jigsaw characters than the slashed up people waiting to see the films.

The movies we watched this week were mostly slick bigger budgeted Horror films that gave the studios that produced them an edge for the youth market. Zack Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead takes the original Night of the Living Dead and the 70's movie of the same name and combined them for one big blockbuster. Even seeing the zombie that was pregnant give birth to a zombie baby was unpleasant, but not scary.

Homework Movie - A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

"What if they make a monster in their dreams?"

"They turn their back on it. Take away its energy, it disappears"

Falling asleep is never a good thing in the theaters, but I can only imagine that when audiences across America saw this movie, sales in coffee and NoDoz shot up quickly! A Nightmare on Elm Street takes the typical horror monster and puts him inside his victim's head. The story centers around four teenagers, and more specifically Nancy Thompson Played by Heather Langenkamp, and their quest to find out who's killing their friends while they are asleep.

In the waking world of Nightmare, the adults are clueless to what's happening to their own children due to the parents mistakes earlier in life when they murdered a man tried of murdering children, but due to a technicality, let go. His lynching brought on this story's killer spirit to exact revenge on the families, including a young Johnny Depp in his first role as Glen Lantz. The special FX are creative and the way the deaths are designed is also.

Wes Craven directed this movie in 1948 after several others in the horror genre that he both wrote and directed. This movie was such a success that it spawned several others in the series with the same characters, but the only other directed by Craven was the New Nightmare a decade later. As a master writer in the horror genre, Craven later designed the Scream series to make fun of the supposed rules of the style he helped define for a generation of moviegoers.

This movie not only created a series that is still popular today, but had also elevated the career of Robert Enguland, who had been acting for 10 years before this series made him a household name as Fred (or Freddy) Kruger. Along with Friday the 13th, this movie stands as a new generation of horror that sees both the good and evil sides of life in the genre. Mrs. Vorhees is a distraught parent that saw her child neglected in Friday, however her actions were a bit extreme in justification.

Recently there was a remake of the popular Nightmare franchise produced by controversial producer/director Michael Bay, that has butchered not only Nightmare on Elm Street, but Texas Chainsaw and he's gotten his hands on TMNT for the 2014 calendar.

"He's dead, honey, cause mommy killed him"