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.
