Are you here because you’ve seen Saw? Or because you’re curious to learn more? Whether you’ve witnessed the interwoven narrative of this 2004 American horror film or merely heard about it, you likely know about Saw and its association with violence, gore, and “torture porn.” This term, “torture porn”, refers to films that prioritize brutal and gratuitous images of people getting tortured or killed on screen. Various critics frequently utilize this term to discredit horror films, labeling them as lacking substance and reducing them to nothing more than sadistic narratives.
In a 2007 New York Times article, Jeannette Catsoulis called the first Saw film an “unexpected success” and described the whole franchise as “distasteful” due to its visceral and intense sequences. While not every film caters to everyone’s taste, particularly when it comes to horror, I believe some individuals dismiss and disregard films like Saw due to intense content. These discourses not only discourage viewers from actually watching the movie but also from critically analyzing and engaging with the film’s content.
The film, directed by James Wan, begins when two strangers Adam Stanheight (Leigh Whannell) and Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) find themselves chained to the pipes at opposite ends of a dirty and blood-stained bathroom. As the two men attempt to piece together their final moments before being trapped in the bathroom and attempting to seek an escape, the film cleverly weaves in flashbacks delving into the lives of Adam, Lawrence, and past victims. Simultaneously, it intertwines these events with the current investigation into the notorious Jigsaw killer.
source: Lionsgate
Central to the film’s brilliance is the character of Jigsaw, also known as John Kramer (Tobin Bell). Jigsaw isn’t a conventional villain driven by malice or the desire to kill. He operates on a twisted moral compass to make individuals appreciate life’s value. His traps and games aren’t just sadistic displays of power; they’re an attempt to confront his victims with their flaws and make them rethink the harm they have caused in the past. Although Jigsaw has minimal screen time, his absence only adds to his presence. Viewers, along with investigators, must piece together the clues to discover Jigsaw’s identity and motives.
While the term “torture porn” looms in media discussions, Saw defies this one-dimensional categorization. Although Saw includes scenes of violence and blood and many of the later films within the franchise include more gore with the introduction of intricate Jigsaw traps, the first film is not consumed by graphic images. Instead, it intricately balances tension with its exploration of moral ambiguity and the psychological depth that sets it apart from mere shock value.
source: Lionsgate
Among fans, Saw is also known for its intertwining narratives and surprising plot twists. In the final moments of the film, the seemingly lifeless corpse that has lay in the middle of the bathroom for the entirety of the runtime slowly comes to life. It is revealed that the body is John Kramer, the real Jigsaw Killer, who “likes to book himself front-row seats to his own sick little games.” The impact of this twist extends far beyond the immediate shock and elevates Saw beyond just a violent and torture-filled flick. It makes viewers rethink everything they just watched, wondering what clues they either caught or missed. It is a moment that remains in viewers’ minds long after the credits roll.
The Saw franchise stands as a milestone in the horror genre, as it is one of the highest-grossing horror series of all time. Saw X, the 10th installment in the franchise, was also released in September of 2023. With these accolades, it is safe to say that many people love the first Saw film and the whole series. If there’s hesitation about watching Saw, give it a chance. It might defy your expectations and leave you contemplating its twists, memorable characters, moral situations, and iconic theme song.
Horror movies weren’t exactly my family’s cup of tea growing up, but I always loved a good scary story. Since I was old enough to read, I gravitated towards books like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and every Halloween I’d rush to my vovó’s house to watch Cartoon Network’s Goosebumps marathon alone in my room on a fussy old TV that looked like something straight out of Leave it to Beaver.
My godfather was the manager of our local Blockbuster (a fact that pretty much made him the coolest guy in town in my eyes), so whenever my tia babysat me on weeknights, we’d always stop by on our way to her house. At age six, I wasn’t allowed to visit the horror section itself, so I skirted the margins, looking for something I could sneak under the radar. We watched classics like Ghostbusters (“Too scary!” my tia would cry in her thick Portuguese accent), or even documentaries about bones or ancient Egyptian mummies (also “too scary!”), but my favorites were always Scooby Doo.
One blustery autumn afternoon, as the light was beginning to fade from the parking lot, I emerged from the Blockbuster with a KitKat in my coat pocket and a tape I’d never watched before in one mittened hand: Scooby Doo on Zombie Island.
source: Warner Home Video
Sitting in her carpeted basement with a tall glass of strawberry milk, I watched my tia pop in the tape and leave the room to start a load of laundry. That evening, for the first (and only) time, I was the one crying “too scary!” I was completely astonished to find that Scooby Doo on Zombie Island features real, actual, no-bullshit zombies. I was betrayed! The film had flagrantly broken the number one rule of Scooby-Doo: In the end, the monsters are always bad guys (usually evil capitalists) in masks. The thing that really terrified me about Zombie Island was this uncanny subversion of my expectations.
One minute, Scooby and Shaggy are plunging their faces in a lake to gulp mouthfuls of water (too many hot peppers), the next, they’re watching, petrified, as the emaciated corpses of tattered pirates, Confederate soldiers, and Hawaiian-shirted tourists emerge from the watery depths below. As I watched Velma call to the gang for help, surrounded by hordes of zombies with no clear way out, I had to turn the TV off. I thought about it on the short drive home. I had nightmares about it that night. What was going on? What happened to the rules?? Did the world even make sense anymore???
The film, which I wouldn’t watch in full until my twenties, stuck with me all the same. Not one to be cowed, I watched more Scooby Doo films that blustery fall in 2004, quickly learning that the rules of the films aren’t the same as the ones on the show. Most of the direct-to-video entries from the ’90s and early 2000s featured real monsters, as did the ’80s television films that preceded them. Armed with this new set of rules, I quickly embraced this other side of Mystery Inc. (Scooby Doo and the Witch’s Ghost immediately became a household staple). But the initial terror I felt watching Zombie Island gave me a taste of something new: It was the first movie to actually, truly scare me, yes, but it was also the first movie that really got me to think about film analytically.
It filled me with questions, made me think about my expectations, notice when they weren’t met, and, in the process, understand I had them in the first place. Ironically, though I was too young to realize it, Scooby Doo on Zombie Island is itself a roadmap for this process of narrative investigation, a playful exploration of horror conventions and their uses, and it’s worth exploring on those terms.
After a cold open of a typical mystery coming to a close (a green, goblin-like monster is revealed to be a real estate agent caught printing “millions in counterfeit dollars”), the film begins with Daphne being interviewed on a daytime talk show about a new series she hosts called Haunted America.
source: Warner Home Video
The gang has disbanded because, as Daphne puts it, “the monsters always turned out to be bad guys in a mask.” “It got a little boring, eh?” the host laughs. “No kidding!” Daphne dryly replies. In this new show, she wants to show viewers “some real haunted houses.” Once Fred gets the gang back together as a surprise for Daphne’s birthday, Mystery Inc. heads to New Orleans in search of the supernatural.
The film, released in September 1998 after reruns of the show on Cartoon Network renewed interest in the franchise, lightly parodies the conventions of paranormal investigation shows like Haunted Lives: True Ghost Stories (1991-1995, much of which was directed by Texas Chainsaw‘s Tobe Hooper) and Sightings (1991–1997), in so doing, inadvertently reflecting many of the same tropes that would explode into the mainstream the next year with The Blair Witch Project (a film Scooby Doo would itself parody in The Scooby Doo Project that Halloween).
The gang unmasks bad guys all over the city through the shaky lens of a boxy camcorder, REC. flashing in the corner of the frame. With her list of haunted places almost exhausted and no ghosts to be found, Daphne is dismayed that her show won’t have a “new” angle, only the “boring” tropes fans of Scooby Doo are already so familiar with–– until a mysterious young woman, Lena, invites the gang to her employer’s mansion on Moonscar Island.
From here, the film depicts this new haunting through the typical mystery formula while progressively building tension around the characters’ skepticism, adding postmodern depth and unfamiliarity to its material almost five years before James Gunn modernized the franchise with his would-be-R-rated screenplay for the live action Scooby Doo (2002). The gang splits up and explores the mansion, checks out clues and assumes one of the residents is hiding a monetary ulterior motive and, by extension, a rational explanation. Fred and Velma make guesses about which characters are the most suspicious, explaining various red herrings like they’ve unmasked the bad guy already.
source: Warner Home Video
Yet, these assumptions are systematically undercut by the unexplainable–– Velma begins to levitate and a ghost appears over Daphne’s shoulder in their footage, and no amount of familiarity with the tricks of television’s paranormal trade can explain it. As Shaggy and Scooby soon discover, and the gang has begun to expect, the zombies are real this time. This twist, that scared me so thoroughly as a kid, is only the first however. Where this supernatural reveal initially clears Moonscar Island’s mysterious occupants of all suspicion, the gang eventually discovers a set of voodoo dolls that look just like them. As it turns out, Lena and her boss, Simone, are two-hundred-year-old witches, Pagan cat worshippers whose home on the
island was invaded by the same pirates whose carcasses chased Scooby and Shaggy out of the bayou. These two women, then, are the villains, seeking to “drain the lifeforce” out of Mystery Inc. to preserve their immortality. The zombies are only trying to warn them before it’s too late.
The film’s willingness to “poke fun” at its own canon as well as its switchback structure and subverted expectations garnered it critical praise in outlets like The Hollywood Reporter, while its financial success spurred the creation of the sequels I grew to love, beginning with Scooby Doo and the Witch’s Ghost. Watching the film again for this essay, I began unpacking it in a new way. Its “former plantation” setting fascinated and troubled me–– particularly since Shaggy is canonically descended from Confederate soldiers according to Scooby Doo Meets the Boo Brothers (1987)–– a Confederate ghost, confoundingly described in passing as one of the “good guys,” thanks the gang at Zombie Island’s conclusion.
The “evil” backstory for these witches is also complex: We see in flashback that rather than run the plantation, these two women attack the Confederates who erect it (though the filmmakers are careful to elide slavery by showing these white southerners picking their own peppers), and only cast their immortality curse while defending themselves from pirates who invade their home and slaughter their families. It’s a strangely anti-colonial, if G-ratedly whitewashed, narrative–– who these women took the land from in the first place is of course not mentioned. In this light, are these “bad guy” witches really so bad? Is their virulent hatred of tourists really so illogical when even Scooby and the gang treat their home like a quaint scenic backwater to use for their own entertainment and profit?
Strangely enough, this film, and the curiosity I first felt watching it at age six, helped me learn how to think critically, to ask the kinds of questions I’m asking at age twenty five, setting the groundwork for my love of film history, analysis, and criticism. When considering the prompt “how I fell in love with horror,” I chose Zombie Island to highlight over other, better-respected films from my childhood (horror films like Paranormal Activity, say, or even scarier children’s films like Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets) because all sorts of pop culture, no matter how ephemeral, can be inspiring, can spark our curiosity. This straight-to-VHS childrens film taught me how to start worrying–– and love horror in the process. Jinkies!
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