How did Saw change the horror genre? - Saw (2004) Discussion

[–] c-smith1998-674-87100 7 years ago

Saw absolutely changed the horror genre. Through the 90's, horror was in one of its worst states of all time, succumbing to endless terrible sequels and other bad quality films such as Leprechaun. In 1996, Scream came out and proved to studios that horror still had potential to be good, it just needed one more kick. That kick didn't come until 8 years later in 2004 when Saw came out and showed the world a new kind of horror that no one had ever seen before. This brought a lot of confidence back to producers and horror has been growing ever since.

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[–] tuimjedi 7 years ago

Well put mate. I grow up in the 80´s, watching all the great movies of the period on theater and going after the 60´s and 70´s classics on tv and VHS. Then by the end of the 80´s and almost all of the 90´s there was just crappy horror movies! They were either bad sequels or PG-13 boring ones. I gave up the genre and stuck to the classics until Scream show up. Man, it was not just a great horror movie but it make us remember how cool the slasher genre can be. After that every movie wanted to be Scream. Then the Blair Witch and Saw gave new paths to horror movies. Since then we got AT LEAST a good horror movie a year, what´s more than I can say for the 90´s.

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[–] afrodome 7 years ago

It impacted horror but not in the best regard. Choppy, epileptic editing, screaming, and electronic music definitely desensitized audiences to movies that require gore and screaming and buildups & story/character development are secondary. I don't hate gore/violence in movies, in fact I loved films such as Eden Lake and A L'Interieur, but Saw feels like a heavy metal music video sprawled out into a 90 minute film (and a bunch of milked sequels of more people getting tortured). Capturing people and torturing them over stuff Jigsaw found to be punishable makes everything in the end pointless and unjustified...not to mention the headache from the strobe lights and that ridiculous score.

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[–] c-smith1998-674-87100 7 years ago

I think you're letting your personal opinion cloud the impact Saw had. Horror was almost dead in the early 2000's, and if there was no Saw, horror might not even exist in popular culture today

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[–] afrodome 7 years ago

Speaking of subjective standpoints, to say that horror was almost dead in the early 2000's is severely reaching. If there was no Saw, there wouldn't be an endless slew of Saw sequels and horror wouldn't just cease to exist. Perhaps it influenced a new craving for audiences, mainstreaming splatter film into the mainstream. Maybe it's influence on grossing out people motivated screenwriters and director to make horror films that didn't rely on torture and screaming but rather go back to the roots of creating tension and atmosphere. Saw is in a class of its' own in terms of pure exploitation i.e. bloods & guts, strobe light editing, but that's it (for me atleast). I saw it in theaters when I was 15 and even at that age couldn't get past the exploitive nature and ridiculousness that the film shamelessly presented. Check out Funny Games (remake or the original which is in German, essentially the same film) and it might sober that need for excessive violence in the films you watch.

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[–] c-smith1998-674-87100 7 years ago

In my argument, I refer to Saw, not any of its sequels. There is nothing ridiculous about the first film. It always gets a bad rap because of the sequels, but it has hardly any gore. There are only two scenes which have this editing style that you are complaining about, despite the fact that in this movie they do nothing but add to the effect of this film. As I have mentioned in one of my previous comments, I do not claim that Saw brought back horror from the dead, but it gave it the final push. Horror was in arguably its worst state in the 90's (either 90's or late 40's), but Scream helped it gain strength. This strength wasn't enough quite enough, but with Saw in 2004, finally pushed it.

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[–] ladsontour69 7 years ago

in my opinion saw changed the genre because it was an effective horror story, and it had a memorable villain- in saw its jigsaw (the voice) and the puppet. it also had an amazing twist at the end, and you can relate to killer (to an extent) in a way that he had a genuine if not psychotic reason for doing it.
there is a film in every decade that reinvents the horror genre. scream did it in the 90s and i still think its the best horror film of all time. maybe because i was born in 1990 so i grew up with it. but saw was the horror film of the decade.i give credit to paranormal activity and blair witch, for its style and originality but there isn't anything iconic about it like, the puppet or ghost face.
to me there has been scarier films since saw, such as the descent and insidious and the conjuring, but again, they are very scary affective horror films, but do not have the originality like saw does. and as sad as it seems, when a horror film gets several *beep* sequels that everyone still seems to love and go to the cinema to see, it proves how great the original one was.

70s - halloween.
80s - nightmare on elm street.
90s - scream.
00s - saw
10s - ?

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[–] gibsonj338-3 (39) 7 years ago

If I had to sort horror films by decades from the first decade (1880s) to the last full decade (2000s) as to what I think help change the horror film genre, here is how I would do it.

1880s - Le Manoir du diable (1889) (considered to be the first horror film)

1890s - The Execution of Mary Stuart (1895) (first horror film to use special effects)

1900s - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1908)

1910s - Frankenstein (1910)

1920s - The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

1930s - White Zombie (1932) (considered to be the first full length horror film)

1940s - The Wolf Man (1941)

1950s - House of Wax (1953) (the first horror film to use 3D)

1960s - Peeping Tom (1960) (the first slasher horror film)

1970s - The Exorcist (1973)

1980s - Friday the 13th (1980)

1990s - The Blair Witch Project (1999) (the first found footage horror film)

2000s - Saw (2004)

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[–] prolelol (1421) 7 years ago

Surprisingly, Une nuit terrible (1896) is not listed as a horror film while it has a giant spider in it.

"The Blair Witch Project (1999) (the first found footage horror film)"
But what about Cannibal Holocaust?

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[–] gibsonj338-3 (39) 7 years ago

After looking up the movie Cannibal Holocaust, I would agree that The Blair Witch Project is not the first found footage film as I thought. It is the most famous found footage film in the United States.

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[–] prolelol (1421) 7 years ago

Some people also call Peeping Tom to be the first found footage film because it has some footages from it.

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[–] gibsonj338-3 (39) 7 years ago

I can see that. Nice to know.

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[–] Chloe (127) 4 years ago

It started the 'torture porn' sub-genre, which was mainly propagated by it's own sequels but I don't consider this a particularly positive legacy for the horror genre. The Asian horror boom was already in full swing by 2004 (with Ring & Ju-On leading the way), and I consider that to be the stand-out horror sub-genre of the decade. Then later on I'd even say the zombie boom was more impacting than Saw's torture porn, and it's legacy is still felt to this day with the slew of zombie movies that are still being pumped out each year.

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