Where the lines blur around what is or isn’t ‘horror’ can offer an insight into the ideological blind-spots of wider society. The latest Contrapoints review examines the Saw franchise, and provides an interesting insight into the liberal mindset in the process.
In a dark room, a grizzled detective’s face is transfixed on a CRT television, VHS whirring. In horror, we watch with him as the tape plays. A serial killer has kidnapped a member of the gay community, and as punishment for his sins of the flesh, he is being slowly lowered rectum first onto a gnarled metal spike sticking up out of a chair.
This is not from a Saw film, or even a film at all. It’s not even a rip off. This is a scene from episode 1 of Wire in the Blood (2002), a mainstream ITV crime drama based on Val McDermid’s 1995 crime novel. The moral hand-wringing about Saw as a franchise was always bizarre. Seriously though, considering the proliferation of torture, sexual assault and vicious murder which has always been prevalent in crime thrillers or even the news, it’s almost nostalgic to remember a time when cinema was so culturally important that it could provoke such outrage.
The episode of Wire in the Blood was definitely never considered a ‘horror’ product, it was safely within the crime bracket. Se7en likewise jumps between crime-horror and crime-thriller depending on where you look, but Saw (2004) is somewhat unhelpfully described as ‘psychological horror-thriller’ on Wikipedia. Honestly, a movie with no supernatural elements completely focused on solving a serial killer case and getting to know the motives and philosophies behind a serial killer, and you don’t see the word ‘crime’ anywhere in that genre description.
Thanks to this video essay by Contrapoints, I feel like I have really solid answers for many of the big thematic questions within this strange genre phenomenon, which (if it is horror) is now the biggest overall grossing horror film franchise of all time. Overall I think there’s a good argument that it might be the best video essay of all time, being able to deliver satisfying answers to questions but also open new lines of thought which apply widely in the political theatre today.
Why People Are Wrong About Stuff and Stuff
One of the most obvious answers to the question of why Saw is considered a horror film is the sheer amount of psychological effect it was able to have on people, especially people who weren’t yet in the age bracket to watch it ethically under the caring maternal gaze of the BBFC. As jarring as some of that crazy music video editing looks to today’s eyes and as drab and uncool as that Industrial Grindcore aesthetic plays to modern Cyberpunk sensibilities, many like Natalie came away feeling EVIL emanating from Saw.
There’s a certain debt to be paid to Blair Witch in terms of marketing too. After all, in true creepypasta tradition there are many elements from the Saw traps which have been present in real life cases I have no desire to write or think about further. The Jigsaw Killer is a real guy, although nothing like Saw Jigsaw. In truth, he more so reflects people considered more in the bracket of terrorist than serial killer in the vein of McVeigh or The Unabomber. In fact, pretty much all you have to do to turn Jigsaw into a real character is to move him from a serial killer into a spree killer who does all his work in one go. Those who’ve had the misfortune to try to sit through the manifestos of a few modern Islamophobic ecofascist vigilantes will see a lot of Jigsaw in them.
Hell, sometimes I think there’s a lot of Jigsaw in a lot of men. Luigi Mangione didn’t torture anyone, but there sure as hell was a saw trap where Jigsaw fucks up a Health Insurance dude. Maybe it’s an urge which dates back to chivalry, a kind of urge to purge or to cleanse which so permeated the Nazi party’s ideology. Whatever the reason, I can’t be the only person to have had an uncomfortable conversation with somebody (probably doing a business degree) who doesn’t even see Jigsaw as the bad guy at all. I’m by no means comfortable in the United Kingdom or in Europe in this period of economic and cultural decline, but the enshrined militia readiness headspace present within the American psyche is too terrifying to even comprehend.
That being said, I feel like 2026 Jigsaw wouldn’t even be killing, he’d just be an influencer.
Sadism vs Masochism
Maybe my favourite insight from the Contrapoints video was the view that Saw isn’t a franchise for sadists but one for masochists empathising more with the victims and in some way enjoying the cringe of the violence with a side helping of ‘at least it isn’t me’.
Even the ‘sucks to be you’ explanation fails here though. The threat of Jigsaw was able to bring about a sense in any straight white middle class person of what it’s like to be reduced to a target. It gave them an experience of what it’s like to be on someone’s list for something you didn’t even get a chance to justify or defend. You could be outed for being a crappy father or cheating or self harming or smoking or working in an industry this one old dude doesn’t like. I definitely agree that the critics were wrong to think Saw was the kind of film for bullies, sadists and associated assholes. Saw is true and pure liberal horror.
Maybe the most affecting part of the Jigsaw franchise is in how Amanda (the victim from the original face-bear trap (definitely an 8/10 trap at least) is so easily brought into the ideological grasp of Jigsaw, given a place to fit in after living as a heroin addict. So often in liberal, moralist thinking it’s easy to overlook or even seek not to notice the problems in society which stem from deep systematic alienation. The cruelty of the recent time period which saw increasing austerity combined with foreign wars and the proliferation of smartphone doomscrooling shows us that despite increasingly positive conditions for some minorities, very little tangible change has been made to inequality and spiralling negative social conditions.
As the video points out, Jigsaw does at least meet these people where they lay. Jigsaw at least acknowledges his hurt from the lack of justice in society and his desire to redress the balance. Call it a crime thriller all you want, but the possibility of purity-pilled fascists teaming with economically disenfranchised people is all the horror any liberal needs. Natalie sees Jigsaw as a sort of Daddy Politics end logic found human flesh.
No, Yeah It Is a Horror Film
Ultimately, for all the pearl clutching around Saw’s release, it’s a film which respects and cares about victims more than any average episode of Law and Order or NCIS or any of that. Ironically, I think ‘crime thrillers’ almost HAVE to not care about victims very much for the mystery of the crime to take its rightful place as the driver of the plot. Saw isn’t really about crime as much as it’s about justice and punishment. It has more in common with Dante than McDermid, despite the proliferation of spiky objects.
There’s plenty more I could go through from this video, honestly. It’s almost a shame to see how many great non-fiction filmmakers there are on YouTube but so little fiction seems to make waves on the platform. Cinema’s in somewhat of a Saw trap itself as it figures out exactly where it’s supposed to sit in the culture.
Exactly who put Cinema there, and whether it can cut off its own leg to survive before Premium Television does, nobody knows.
But it was probably some rich arsehole.