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90May be the best independent horror film to have come out since "The Blair Witch Project." It's certainly better than "Blair Witch", and more fun, more gruesome, and more macabre. In a very delightful way.
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83The filmmakers piece it together with almost clockwork perfection and deliver it with masterful misdirection, creating the most ingenious, eccentric and brazenly jaundiced psycho-thriller to come along in years.
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80As good an all-out, non-camp horror movie as we’ve had lately.
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75Wan's tense, grisly cinematic morsel won't go down easy. But once it hits bottom, Saw is oddly satisfying, though the gag reflex never entirely goes away.
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75Horror fans will find plenty to shriek about. Everyone else should keep their distance.
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75The slasher scenes, though relatively few, are amazingly evocative for such a low-budget movie.
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75Saw is for hard-gore horror aficionados only.
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70Boasts an undeniably original premise and clever plot machinations that lift it several notches above the usual slasher film level.
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70Less a classical narrative than an ingenious machine for inducing terror, rage, and paralyzing unease.
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67Saw is a gristle-cut B psycho thriller that would like to tap the sickest corners of your imagination. It has a few moments of nightmare creepiness, but it's also derivative and messy and too nonsensical for its own good.
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60It's brutal horror, where anyone can die at any time, and gorehounds will love it. Average folks may find it too intense.
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Saw is so full of twists it ends up getting snarled. For all of his flashy engineering and inventive torture scenarios, the Jigsaw Killer comes across as an amateur. Hannibal Lecter would have him for lunch.
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60Does a better-than-average job of conveying the panic and helplessness of men terrorized by a sadist in a degrading environment, but it is still not especially scary.
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50It's gross as hell.
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50An efficiently made thriller, cheerfully gruesome, and finally not quite worth the ordeal it puts us through.
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The film is a squeamish exercise, like watching a cruel child pull the wings off flies - especially the climactic scene, which is so gory it would turn a coyote's stomach.
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50As long as Saw stays in that big, nasty bathroom, all we need to believe is the knot in our stomachs.
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50Spoiled by its own insatiable desire for envelope-pushing flair; it’s wider-scoped when it should be intimate, splashy instead of subtle, icky but not scary.
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Let's just say this: It's a lucky thing I wasn't shackled to my seat in the theatre during this movie. I'd be limping home.
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50Wan's debut feature is a twisted, squirm-inducingly nasty bit of work, which isn't a criticism because that's exactly what he and cowriter Leigh Whannell had in mind.
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50With its toilet-bobbing and blood spurting and Elwes's fey, Vincent Price–like mugging, Saw succeeds in capturing something like Takashi Miike by way of William Castle. Happy Halloween, indeed.
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40A story that's so ridiculous you'll at least be entertained by the outrageous plot contortions to come.
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38Becomes exceedingly disgusting when it wallows in the psychological torture of a child, a no-no under any circumstances.
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What makes Saw so awful is that it starts with a clever premise and then completely blows it.
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30Saw has its moments, and most of them are brutal in the extreme, but ultimately it's one tremendous misfire that will either leave you laughing or, possibly, gagging. Not what I'd call a winning combination.
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30Though dumber than a box of rocks, Saw forges ahead with the kind of conviction and energy that will keep bad-cinema junkies sitting bolt upright.
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30A crude concoction sewn together from the severed parts of prior horror/serial killer pics.
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30But humans who live above ground, including horror fans, will find themselves only fitfully entertained and more consistently appalled.
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25Where "Seven" seemed to radiate diabolical evil, Saw just radiates idiocy.
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25A gore movie with no teeth.
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25Promoted as "the year's scariest movie," it's anything but.
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20Sicko horror film from Australia, whose sadism is topped only by its absurdity.