Monster Scholar

Though I told myself I would not allow the Saw franchise to break my heart again, I caught Saw VI at my local cineplex last week. Buoyed by the positive reviews of other horror bloggers, I went in with high hopes that were promptly dashed to bits. Spoilers and analysis to follow. The film starts off with a trap that riffs off of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice . Just as Shylock demands his pound of flesh in repayment for a bad loan, two loan officers are pitted against each other in a twisted a game where they have to offer up their own flesh to survive. According to Jigsaw, these unlucky lenders have preyed on people who could not repay the balance of their loan. The one who cuts off the most flesh will escape having screws torqued deep into their brain. Though this seems like a straightforward enough trap, it is comically complicated by the fact that one lender is severely overweight compared to his petite colleague. This scene is the high point of the film. Aesthetically, Saw ...

Previously: Saw II: Finding a Formula Saw III has been widely acknowledged by fans as the one film in the Saw series that jumped the shark and went against the formula established Leigh Whanell and Darren Lynn Bousman in Saw II . But the success of Saw III can also be attributed to moves by Whannell and Bousman to fully inhabit their individual creative roles. Leigh Whannell did not attempt to partner with Bousman on the script, while Bousman grew in his capacity as a director. By respecting each other’s each other’s creative spaces, Whannell and Bousman were able to create a truly unique horror film. After cutting his teeth on Saw II , Bousman had become comfortable enough with the franchise to find his own style which is reflected in his use of cinematic transitions. While the transitions in Saw II were awkward and choppy, Bousman puts his own spin on the transitions of Saw III. The result is an elegant rendition of the smooth cuts Wan created in Saw I , as Bousman pans away...

Previously: The Rise and Fall of the SAW Films While the first Saw film introduced a new concept to horror of a vigilante killer forcing people to cherish their lives, Saw II tried to come up with a formula for the rest of the franchise. In Saw II a group of people who are locked in decrepit house need to work together to solve the game and save their lives. But Saw II also represents a shift in the creative minds behind the series. James Wan left what he had created to fellow filmmaker Leigh Whannell and new director Darren Lynn Bousman. Leigh Whannell tried to replicate the success of the first Saw by partnering with Bousman to write the script for Saw II . But their partnership wouldn’t measure up to the dynamic duo Whannell and Wan had been, and the result was a weak script that detracts from the potential power of the film. Despite the combined efforts of Whannell and Bousman, Saw II inevitably falls short because it lacks compelling characters to maintain the audience’s inte...

With the sixth installment of the Saw franchise set to hit theaters this Halloween and news that Saw VII has already gotten the green light from Lionsgate, it seems only appropriate to take a long look back at the films that started it all. This five part series will look at each of the Saw films in detail and discuss what they’ve contributed to the evolution of the Saw phenomenon and twenty-first century horror. Saw feels very much like a short film, which is what it was originally intended to be. Director, James Wan and writer/actor Leigh Whannell met in film school. Whannell had always wanted to write and act while Wan was an aspiring director. Their combined talents met in the middle and Wan came up with the idea of Saw for a short film that the two would shoot on their own. The original concept was simple. Two guys are chained to opposite ends of a decrepit bathroom, and between them is the body of a dead man with a tape recorder in one hand and a gun in the other. Both captives h...

Welcome to the newest feature on Monster Land, "And Now This" will be a platform for plugging horror minutiae and anything else that can’t be explored in a longer article. In The Abominable Dr. Phibe s the title character, played by Vincent Price, is consumed by his quest for revenge on all the people involved in his wife’s death. Dr. Phibes visits the nine biblical plagues of Egypt on his victims, including death by hail (in January), locusts, rats and for one unlucky gent, draining his blood. Phibes saves the best for last and Dr. Vesalius, the chief surgeon on his wife’s case, is forced to operate on his teenage first-born son. Phibes has lodged a key close to the boy’s heart that will open a brace holding the operating table underneath a cylinder filled with slowly descending acid. Vesalius has six minutes to extract the key and save his son from an acid facial. Phibe’s elaborate trap calls to mind several others in the SAW series, including Amanda’s trap in the first S...