Saw is the most pathetic, ugly and uninteresting film I have seen in recent years and it will occupy this sad top spot for a long time, unsurpassable.

Preceded by a buzz already wanting to bring it to the pinnacle of the big horror films, we hold yet with Saw only a vulgar and noisy B-movie. No money, no talent, just a series of false-good ideas which are never leaded to their completion. Frankly, it is hard to imagine how this bad episode of the Tales from the Crypt have could made so many emulates.

However, this was the case from the beginning, since the creators James Wan and Leigh Whannell found a buyer at the short film stage. Of course, not the big fortune, but enough to poach a bunch of nerdy actors in search of a new impulse. First of them, Cary Elwes, which had not been seen in the main role of a film since Princess Bride in 1987 ; then Monica Potter (Con Air or Patch Adams) ; or Danny Glover (Lethal Weapon), who yet must be sufficiently sheltered from the need in order to avoid to play in such a turkey.

The film begins as a psychological thriller : two guys who don’t know each other end up tied up in a crappy bathroom. The serial killer who sequesters them exposes the game with his face covered : one has eight hours to kill the other without which he will see his family executed.

Unfortunately, we are very quickly disappointed and we have to yield to the facts : Saw is only a failed horror film for retarded teens, eager for bloody scenes and not looking at the inconsistencies. It is an ersatz of Se7en - for the sadism and the in drawer construction of the story - but without David Fincher's virtuosity and perfectionism ; and of Cube, for the “huis-clos”. Indeed, the poor James Wan - who was in his early days as a director - seems totally lost. He makes us zigzag between a pathetic teenage naïvety (the history of the villain and his convoluted schemes) and a big ludicrous and absurd farce. So many parasitic attributes that prevent the film from unfolding, killing the few good scenes (the intrusions in the various apartments, all successful) by the sudden appearence of a cartoonesque howl or a ridiculous mask.

Even the clichés of the genre are slaughtered. For evidence : the chase scenes are sacrificed for a measly effect of acceleration. The cops are completly stupid from beginning to end : as usual, they go into a hangar, only two of them, at night, without saying anybody where they are going, and of course, Danny Glover is stabbed, then shot twice and finally die, what a joke !

In short ! It is great American teen cinema. Namely, the story is explained so that even the less clever can follow (for exemple, we see the scene of the photo in the garage three times !). The ending is equal to the film, pitiful and disconcerting ; necessarily unexpected and surprising since incoherent and far-fetched ! Only the Americans have the secret of these last-second reversals "because-it-is-like-that-and-the-director-has-decided-it-so".

We could even say that the guy who has made such a mediocre movie is a criminal. Indeed, the suffering of the victims must be undoubtedly interpreted as a metaphor for that of the spectators ... who are probably the only true victims in all this scenario.

When we know that Saw has become a reference of the genre ! A cult film for a whole generation! And that no less than seven films have followed this first opus... We can imagine that some spectators delight in mediocrity... or are particularly masochistic !