I love scary stuff, but I am a big baby. My workaround is to see all scary movies early enough in the day that there is still loads of daylight to wash away the creepy.
My movie-going friend, Lily, feels similarly, so we hit what we knew would be the very scary Saw for the first show at 10:45 a.m.
Not early enough. This movie makes Se7en look like Bambi. There are some fine performances (although the first few scenes are a really badly acted exception), it's super-stylish, and it's a really good story with only minimal barriers to belief (as Lily pointed out, are there two cops anywhere who would [a] visit the dark and creepy lair of a sociopathic serial killer without backup and [b] do so armed only with their service revolvers and a smoke machine?)
But the torture/killing in this is so sick and heartless, it makes you wonder who could come up with it. Well, apparently handsome, young Leigh Whannell, who plays lead opposite a (sadly) puffy Cary Elwes, can. He shares story credit with the director, James Wan, and has sole screenwriting credit.
Yow.
Well, I guess congratulations are in order. Young man wrote a big hit. He can act, yessir. And he scared Lily and me so bad we had to walk it off in the shoe department of Nordstrom's for a good half-hour afterwards. No purchases; just a Holly Golightly kinda thing.
Wait a minute, just got an idea for the perfect psychic palate cleanser...
xxx
c