Of all the holidays celebrated worldwide, no single day is more loved by the UTG staff than Halloween. With the arrival of October, the time has finally come to begin rolling out a plethora of features and special announcements we have prepared in celebration of our favorite day, including the one you’re about to read.

31 Days Of Halloween is a recurring daily feature that will run throughout the month of October. The hope and goal of this column is to supply every UTG reader with a daily horror (or Halloween themed) movie recommendation that is guaranteed to amplify your All Hallows’ Eve festivities. We’ll be watching every film the day it’s featured, and we hope you’ll follow along at home. If you have a suggestion, contact us and we may include your favorite scarefest in an upcoming column!

Day 22: Saw (2004)

Twist endings in horror films are nothing new. Lots of movies try them and fail (Signs, The Secret Window) and some swing for the fences and blow your mind wide open (Scream, The Sixth Sense, Sleepaway Camp). In 2004 an indie movie hit the scene that had a great setup: a serial killer (or is he?) kidnaps victims and puts them in homemade traps to make them choose life and learn to be a better person. This movie looked like it had it all, great tension, a gritty and artistic feel, a weird little puppet riding a unicycle, and what looked to be just enough gore to keep the hardcore horror fans satisfied. Saw delivered on all fronts and then it managed to do something even more just when you thought it was already perfect. This film had one of the best twist endings in horror history and it was damn near impossible to see it coming.

It even had the guy from The Princess Bride hacking off his own foot.

Saw was one of the first horror movies I saw opening night at midnight in theaters. I remember my stepfather had to take me to see it because I was not yet 17 and it was very much rated R. Ever since that year I made it to every single midnight opening for the Saw franchise no matter how unnecessary the movies had become and, let’s be honest, after the third one that was all of them. What a lot of people do not remember (or maybe even never realized in the first place) is that Saw was an indie film. It had a budget of just over a million dollars and a practically unknown cast. The writer/director duo of Leigh Whannell and James Wan (who just had big hits with The Conjuring and the Insidious films) were unheard of. Needless to say they made their mark and horror has not quite been the same ever since. After Saw came out there was a race to push the boundaries of gore and shock value with movies like Hostel and movies of the like, but when Saw did it it was not for shock, it was for effect and that effect has lasted nearly a decade so far.

Watch it or don’t, make your choice.

Editorial written by: Justin Proper – Follow him on Twitter
Last year’s Day 22 film: Paranormal Activity 4

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Justin Proper

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