Saw - Saw was a financial success. Shot on a meager budget of about US$1.2 million, it earned over $55 million at the box office in the U.S. alone and $102,917,772 worldwide.[1] Critical responses were mixed. It earned a 46% rating from Rotten Tomatoes, and a 29% rating from the most esteemed professional critics, qualifying it as "rotten." Despite the mixed critical response, the movie attracted a strong following and spawned four lucrative sequels to date as of January 2009, with a fifth sequel in production.
Noted critic Roger Ebert called Saw "an efficiently made thriller" but "finally not quite worth the ordeal it puts us through."[2] Carla Meyer of The San Francisco Chronicle wrote that the film "[combined] B-movie acting with a twisted mind-set and visual tricks designed to camouflage cheap effects" and that it was "terrifying at some moments and insinuatingly creepy at many others".[3]
It is ranked #499 on Empire magazine's list of the 500 greatest films of all time. [4]
Saw II- Even more so than in the previous film, critics found Jigsaw's diabolic "games" to require a large amount of planning and fortuitous timing in order to succeed, causing some to liken his murderous schemes to Rube Goldberg machines.[2][3][4][5] Tobin Bell addressed some of these criticisms by saying, "My sense is that [Jigsaw] is so detail oriented that I think he thinks in terms of worst case scenario. I think he’s a very good judge of character, so his sense that, for example, that Detective Matthews was going to play right into his trap, which he did, was right on. Now, it seems to me that he’s got plan 2 always in place. And there’s probably been a number of plan 2s. I mean, we’ve only seen three movies. Maybe there are six more somewhere where he failed, where something didn’t play out."[6]
According to Rotten Tomatoes, the aggregate rating of this film was only 36%, with several reviewers revolted by the explicit gore and torture scenes.[7] Of the few critics who provided positive reviews, some remarked that it was a worthy follow-up, providing plenty of what fans of the first expected.[8] As with its predecessor, however, the film garnered far more positive reception with the public than with critics. It currently holds a rating of 74% by users at Rotten Tomatoes, and a score of 6.8 at the Internet Movie Database.[9]
Made for only $4 million (not including a $20 million P&A budget), Saw II grossed $147 million worldwide, which includes $87 million in the United States.
Saw III- At screenings in the United Kingdom, three people were reported to have fainted at separate cinemas, resulting in ambulances needing to be called.[7]
Rotten Tomatoes.com gave the film a 26% rating, qualifying it as "Rotten."
[edit] Box office
Playing in 3,167 theaters Saw III grossed a total of $33,610,391 on its opening weekend.[1] With a production budget of $9.98 million,[1] the film was already considered a box office success. Saw III ended up grossing $80,238,724 domestically and $150,907,724 worldwide. As of May 2008, the film has made $164,874,275, making Saw III the most successful film in the series worldwide thus far.[1]
Saw IV- Critical reception to Saw IV was generally negative. The film holds a rating of 18% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 64 reviews.[16] On Metacritic, the film has an average score of 36 out of 100, based on 16 reviews.[17] Scott Schueller from the Los Angeles Times called it "a film as edgy as a rubber knife" and said that "if the terrible craft of Bousman's film doesn't turn your stomach, the borderline pornographic violence will. It's disconcerting to imagine anyone enjoying the vile filth splashing the screen."[18] Frank Scheck from The Hollywood Reporter said "the famously inventive torture sequences here seem depleted of imagination", but added that "it hasn't yet jumped the shark like such predecessors as the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th movies eventually did."[19] Peter Hartlaub from The San Francisco Chronicle called it "the Syriana of slasher films, so complicated and circuitous that your only hope of understanding everything is to eat lots of fish the night before and then watch each of the previous films, in order, right before you enter the theater."[20] James Berardinelli wrote that "Saw IV functions as a drawn-out, tedious epilogue to a series that began with an energetic bang three years ago with Saw, then progressively lost momentum, coherence, and intelligence with each successive annual installment. Saw IV is nothing short of a money-grab. Despite a couple of loose ends (that are tied up unsatisfactorily here), Saw III finished the story."[21]
Positive reviews came from Scott Weinberg from Fearnet, who said that while it "is almost certainly the weakest of the series where stuff like plot, logic, and chills are concerned... there's still more than enough here to keep the fans intrigued, entertained, and squirming in their seats" and added that the "Saw