Sunday, June 19, 2011

30 Day Horror Challenge Strikes Back Day 19: Character you were surprised was the killer.

Considering the abyss of sucktitude that the Saw franchise eventually fell into, sometimes it’s hard to remember how good the first three were. In fact, the first one was one of the best horror flicks of the early 2000’s era. Part of the film’s appeal was, of course, the traps, which was a fairly original concept. The other thing everyone was talking about was the ending. Attention M. Night Slapnuts; this is how you do a twist ending properly. It’s really tough to catch me off guard with a killer’s identity. That’s not bragging. I honestly wish I wasn’t so difficult to surprise. I don’t actively try to figure these things out during movies, but I’ve seen so many flicks that I can see what plot they’re re-using a mile away. It’s the same way with professional wrestling storylines, but that’s a discussion for another time...

I’m gonna stop right here for a moment. I’m sure we’re all familiar with the flick by now, but on the off chance that someone might be reading this who has never seen Saw, don’t read any more of this article. That means SPOILER ALERT! There, you have been warned.

Zep, the orderly, was obvious from the beginning. When he was “revealed” as the guy who was holding the doctor’s wife and son hostage, I just figured that the filmmakers had gotten lazy and not bothered to even make a play for a mystery. When the corpse in the middle of the room got up, my mind was blown. I didn’t see that coming at all.

I’ve heard a lot of people rip this ending to shreds. They say it was a cheat because there was absolutely nothing there to set it up. No clues, no real foreshadowing, no nothing. This is true; it is a bit of a cheat. There are no hints that the dead guy on the floor is actually John, or Jigsaw. It’s also implausible that he laid there so still that he could pass for dead for that long. While we do find out later that he had drugged himself, we didn’t have that info until part three. Right? I’m pretty sure it was three. Anyway, the reason I dug it is that it used a combination of two seemingly opposite story techniques to build the ending. You guys don’t mind if I get a little “pretentious academic literary film school” on you for a second, do ya? Cool, didn’t think so.

The ending is a perfect example of Chekhov’s Gun. No, that’s not a Star Trek reference. It’s referring to 19th century Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. It is a literary technique whereby something seemingly insignificant is introduced early in the story and forgotten about until it suddenly becomes relevant to the plot later. The term comes from his play Uncle Vanya, in which a gun is hung on the wall in the opening moments of act one and never referenced again until much later when, in the climactic scene, a character grabs the gun and tries to shoot someone. The idea is that the audience forgets about the object or character, but when it is reintroduced as a plot point they call back to its earlier appearance. This was used a lot in Scooby Doo for example. Old Mr. So-and-so would be introduced in the opening moments of the episode and never be seen again until the end when they were revealed to be under the mask and gave the whole “and I would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for you meddling kids” speech. John is introduced briefly about twenty minutes into the film, but he seems to just be there to further Zep’s motive. The big reveal at the end when John gets up and we are flashed back to the scene where Zep describes him as “a very interesting person” leads the audience to a very well done “Oh yeah, I had forgotten about that guy” moment.

The other side of the Chekhov’s Gun principle is the belief that nothing should be introduced that is not integral to the plot. This would seem to be diametrically opposed to the idea of the red herring, which is introduced solely for the purpose of misleading the audience. This is what Zep is. While he is technically integral to the plot, the only real function of his character is to make the audience believe that he is the one running the game. The filmmakers, however, managed to weave him into the plot in a way that using him as a red herring wasn’t cheap. They used him to distract you from the Chekhov’s gun ending, therefore using two opposing literary techniques hand in hand to create a truly surprising twist ending. It even surprised me, and for that I salute James Wan and Leigh Whannell. If only they could have carried that kind of quality on into the later entries in the series.

5 comments:

hawkdmh said...

damnit jim i am just a doctor not a film major..i agree it was a suprise.

Cash Wampum said...

I would say the original Friday the 13th. Try to imagine watching that for the first time with no preconceptions. It would be easy to imagine the killer is a man, mostly by the sheer ferocity of the kills and the sadistic treatment of the bodies. It was very rare for a woman to be so violent back in those days and when they were, it was blatant and in your face re: Ilsa or Camille Keaton in I Spit or the mom from Last House on the Left. These movies had the women committing real brutal acts but it was no secret.

At the end of Friday we get the killer entering the story with a friendly disposition. I'm sure some viewers had their doubts when she arrived out of no where and when Mrs. Voorhees finally wigs out and shares her motive I'm doubly sure there was a lot of "I told ya so's" being passed between audience members but all in all it was shocking.

On another topic I think NOT knowing the killer at the end of the movie is even more effective. For example (and I will reference this great movie many times, I'm sure) 1974 - Black Christmas. SPOILER!!!!

We know the killer is Billy, whether that's their real name, we don't know. In the end all we see of this killer is an illuminated eye through a door jam and a slight shadowed figure as he kills Margot Kidder. We can tell its male but that is all. And NOT revealing who the killer is was pure genius because it forces non-closure and you wonder and talk about it even almost four decades later. And the phone calls he made during the movie are some of the most chilling moments in horror history.

SonOfCelluloid said...

DAMMIT CASH! You ruined the end of Black Christmas for me. Screw it, I guess I'll never end up watching that one. I kid, I kid. Just out of curiosity bro, how old are you?

Cash Wampum said...

35

SonOfCelluloid said...

Cool. I'm 31, so we pretty much came up in the same horror "era." My theater going experience starts in the mid 90's though, so you got to catch some cool shit in the theaters that I missed.

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