{"id":1080,"date":"2007-10-29T04:23:23","date_gmt":"2007-10-29T03:23:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/archives\/2007\/10\/29\/the-appeal-of-saw-4\/"},"modified":"2007-10-31T05:01:39","modified_gmt":"2007-10-31T04:01:39","slug":"the-appeal-of-saw-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2007\/10\/29\/the-appeal-of-saw-4\/","title":{"rendered":"The appeal of Saw 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Saw<\/a>Although it wasn’t press screened for UK or US critics Saw IV<\/strong><\/a> took a huge slice of the box office<\/a> over the weekend.<\/p>\n

After the relatively disappointing performance of Hostel 2<\/a> in the summer, some were predicting that the recent cycle of horror films featuring torture had run its course.<\/p>\n

With a highly impressive weekend total of $32.1 million it seems that is not the case, at least with the Saw franchise. I went to a screening in Central London<\/a> at 5pm and was surprised at how many people were there.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t full by any means but it was noticeable at how varied the audience was – it was fairly mixed between males and females of different ages.<\/p>\n

For those who haven’t seen the films – or those who avoid them – they all revolve around a serial killer mastermind called Jigsaw<\/a>. In each film he sets a series of traps (often involving diabolical devices) for his victims which allows them the opportunity to escape if they are prepared to sacrifice something, usually part of their body.<\/p>\n

Saw was actually pretty good, two was OK, three poor and four just OK again. But can Saw V<\/a>\u00a0 sustain what is a remarkably profitable franchise for Lionsgate<\/a>? Although they are sadistic and gruesome, people clearly want to check them out. But why?<\/p>\n

Is it a craving to see shady characters get tortured in ever more elaborate ways? Do people just enjoy the Se7en<\/a>-like structure in each film which involves a serial killer leaving a riddle for the cops? My feeling is that it could be a little of both.<\/p>\n

But what do you think makes them so successful with audiences?<\/p>\n

Leave your comments below or email me<\/a>.<\/p>\n

> Check out local showtimes via Google Movies<\/a>
\n> Find out more about the Saw franchise at Wikipedia<\/a>
\n> Listen to our interview with Tobin Bell from last year<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although it wasn’t press screened for UK or US critics Saw IV took a huge slice of the box office over the weekend. After the relatively disappointing performance of Hostel 2 in the summer, some were predicting that the recent cycle of horror films featuring torture had run its course. With a highly impressive weekend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,25,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}