[Based on the Hit Film] Replaying “Saw: The Game”
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“Based on the Hit Film” is a series of articles looking at the video game spin-offs and adaptations of popular horror and movies. Today, it’s the turn of the Saw games
For much of the first decade of this century, mainstream American horror movies were fairly high in profit, but lacking in originality. Zombie films began shuffling close to the height of popularity and remakes of classic horror were very much the in thing, with some proving successful (Dawn of the Dead, Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and others far less so (My Bloody Valentine).
Such was the craving for something new and exciting that when James Wan’s Saw arrived on the scene, it sparked a flurry of copycats and perhaps too many sequels in a short space of time.
Saw brought something to invigorate the rather listless horror genre. A blood-soaked murder mystery thriller with the twist that the killer tests his victims will to live with some rather brutal and grisly traps. Escape and you’ve been done a favor, meet your demise and you’re just proving you didn’t care that much about living anyway. At least this is how Jigsaw, the series’ iconic killer, sees it.
Who Want’s to Play a Saw Game?
Meanwhile, a couple of years later in video game land, horror was looking for a fresh shot in the arm. At this time Saw had become a juggernaut horror franchise, and the timing could surely never be better for a Saw video game?
Brash Entertainment certainly believed this to be the case, and just before Saw III was set to hit cinemas in October 2006, it announced a deal with Twisted Pictures to create a Saw video game, which would be set to arrive alongside Saw IV the following October.
The idea was that it would be a version of the story from the first film, so as to start a game series that may be as lucrative as its filmic parentage. For various reasons, this would not happen as planned.
After the initial announcement, Brash would go dark on fresh info on the project. The promised tie-in date with Saw IV came and went, and it would be January of 2008 before the game reemerged with Saw’s Billy the Puppet appearing in a teaser. The game, now with a new story within the film universe, was set to appear on PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 as well as PlayStation 2. Brash hyped up the involvement of James Wan and Leigh Whannell, who were to design new traps just for the game.
It all seemed rather positive after such a worrying period of silence, but Brash may well have been full of hot air because not all that long after, Brash Entertainment handed development over to Zombie Studios (who, despite the name, were most famous for making tactical military shooters). Brash Entertainment opted to publish instead. Unfortunately for Brash, and the game itself, things weren’t going to get better.
It was November 14, 2008, and over two years after target release for the Saw video game, Brash Entertainment was shutting down due to financial difficulties, leaving Lionsgate, Zombie Studios and the Saw game stuck, unsure how to proceed.
A Second Chance at Life
Then came a savior of sorts. Japanese giant Konami took up an interest in the game, seeing it as a possible spiritual successor for its fading Silent Hill series. It agreed to publish and set about having the game redesigned to fit its plans.
While much of the core game Zombie Studios and Brash Entertainment had started with was intact, Konami still had a big say in the overall direction and tone of the finished product. Perhaps that was a case of too many cooks, or maybe the game was saved from being a complete disaster, but it is fair to say the troubled development showed in the final version of the game.
October 22, 2009, three whole years after it was due to arrive, the Saw video game finally landed. It was an ugly, confused creature that occasionally dared to do something interesting.
The plot of the game takes place after the events of the first film. aIt sees The Jigsaw Killer (voiced by actual Jigsaw, Tobin Bell) healing Detective David Tapp (not voiced by Danny Glover) from his gunshot wound. He then places him in an abandoned insane asylum to teach him one of his famous life lessons. Jigsaw then goads Tapp into escaping and chasing him as he sits, bound to a chair, wearing the infamous snapping face mask trap seen in the film.
The infatuated Tapp does escape this trap (thanks to a series of waggles of the analog stick by the player) and goes through the asylum in a bid to catch Jigsaw. Unfortunately, he faces plenty of cruel morality tales along the way. Tapp encounters several people who are in some way connected to him, and he must save them from Jigsaw’s sick puzzles. If that were not bad enough, Jigsaw has other captives held here whose sole task is to kill Tapp if they want to live.
The Jig is Up
Tapp faces plenty of grueling feats and learns more and more about Jigsaw’s origins as he progresses. It’s almost certainly unintentional, but there’s a clever metagame going on. Jigsaw directs Tapp through what is essentially a game, as the player does the same. At best it evokes the spirit of Rockstar’s Manhunt. It mirrors the dynamic between the tortured James Earl Cash and the gleeful, grisly prodding of the director, Starkweather, even if it doesn’t quite match it.
You spend time mostly solving Jigsaw’s grim puzzles, sometimes accompanied by an A.I. partner with their own life on the line. sometimes it involves the destruction of others to progress. Saw: The Game is at its best when puzzles are involved, and frankly, that’s not saying a lot.
Its combat crops up a touch too often and is unwelcome due to how unwieldy and unresponsive it is. It has a decent weapon variety, sure, but it feels neither satisfying to execute nor impactful enough for how violent it is. It doesn’t really sell the danger of the situation when bludgeoning a frightened, yet vicious captive looks and feels more like you’re slapping a sandbag with a pillow.
Puzzles build the tension far better, and some traps that involve the lives of others will give you a short glimpse of what the victim’s grisly fate will be should you fail. Like the combat, it lacks the breathless, violent urgency necessary to replicate what makes Saw’s trap set pieces work, but it comes a lot closer. It doesn’t help that the moral trickery employed by Jigsaw in the films is not properly represented here. Saw: The Game often ends up with gore and distress for the sake of a cheap thrill, rather than tie it into Jigsaw’s ethos of testing people’s desire to live.
Live or Die, Make Your Choice
Despite best intentions, the jumbled project that is Saw: The Game inevitably suffers for its stop-start development under multiple developers and publishers. Critics were suitably lukewarm on the end product in 2009. Many cited the wonky combat and haphazard application of the film’s bloodthirsty morality tales. Despite that, there were things to like for fans of Saw.
These interesting things to come out of it were some of the Wan and Whannell trap design, Tobin Bell’s voice work, and the bleak ending to the game. It can end with Tapp committing suicide after escaping the asylum but not capturing Jigsaw. Or Tapp inadvertently kills the wife of his late partner, Steven Sing, in an eerie echo of his demise in the first Saw film.
Based on the Hit Film: Predator Hunting Grounds
This ending sees Tapp driven mad, spending the rest of his days in an actual asylum where he still believes he’s playing Jigsaw’s game. The first ending is canonical, as the game’s sequel, Saw II: Flesh and Blood, confirms it. The film, Saw V, also features Tapp in an obituary.
Any hope that a sequel with fewer background problems would fare better was demolished pretty swiftly, as Saw II: Flesh and Blood was a massive step back from an already underwhelming game. It was released one year after the first game though, coinciding with the release of the seventh film, so the alarmingly quick turnaround was likely a big factor in that game’s shortcomings.
See Saw Game Run
Konami abandoned the Saw project after this, and as we now know, gradually shied away from horror games altogether. As for the developer, Zombie Studios, they were an early victim of the current console generation. after this, it flopped hard with another whiffy horror title Daylight, in 2014. Zombie Studios reanimated no more in 2015 following the retirement of its owners.
The Saw movie series also briefly died after an oversaturation of sequels. It returned in 2017 to moderate success, and subsequently got another chapter lined up. With a much-changed gaming landscape, perhaps there’s one more shot at getting a Saw video game right in the near future.
Editorials
Before ‘The Blair Witch Project’, ‘Alien Autopsy’ Showed How Real Found Footage Could Feel
The line separating artist from con man is a lot thinner than you might initially believe. While I think we can all agree that lying for the sake of profit is actively malicious behavior, isn’t it also true that the faux documentary aspect of The Blair Witch Project is half the reason why that film became such a cultural phenomenon? After all, if there’s one thing filmmakers have in common with stage magicians, it’s that misleading and misdirecting audiences is simply part of the job.
That’s why I’ve developed a habit of mostly ignoring the moral quandaries behind many of film and television’s biggest “hoaxes” in favor of appreciating the narrative elements that drive productions like Mermaids: The Body Found and even Animal Planet’s highly underrated The Cannibal in the Jungle. However, if there’s a definitive case of a highly publicized broadcast fooling the world into taking it seriously, it has to be Fox’s infamous 1995 TV special Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction.
It’s been over three decades since that eerie footage first haunted television screens right at the peak of the ’90s ufology craze, and in that time, the video has taken on a life of its own. From countless parodies and references in everything from The X-Files to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (as well as John Dower’s recently released tell-all documentary The Alien Autopsy Scandal, which I’d highly recommend to genre fans everywhere), there’s no denying the legacy of the Alien Autopsy video. However, I rarely see the tape discussed as what it truly is: a highly convincing found footage film directed by a passionate stage magician and brought to life by masterful practical effects work.
That’s why I’d like to invite readers to join me on a deep dive into one of the most infamous broadcasts of all time in an attempt to reevaluate the footage as a fascinating narrative experience rather than a complete hoax.
The TV Special That Convinced Millions It Was Real
Ray Santilli next to Extraterrestrial replica in ‘The Alien Autopsy Scandal’
For starters, regardless of whether or not you believe that there was in fact an extraterrestrial crash in Roswell during the summer of 1947 and that some form of autopsy was performed on the victims, the producers behind the black & white recordings, Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield, insist that their video was a “restoration.” Though I’d argue that the proper word is “remake”of genuine footage that was too damaged to air on television. That’s why the duo went on to recruit filmmaker and eccentric magician Spyros Melaris and sculptor/monster designer John Humphreys to bring their version of the autopsy to life and sell it to the highest bidder.
This is where the story of the Alien Autopsy as a narrative experience really begins. Melaris claims that his approach to the faux recording consisted of striving for extreme period accuracy in both shooting equipment and setting while also planting subtle details that would initially seem like mistakes but could later be revealed to actually fit the time period. That being said, the filmmaker was under the impression that the short would be released for free as a PR stunt, with the team later producing and selling an informative documentary chronicling exactly how the footage was faked and commenting on how easy it is to manipulate public perception with a good old-fashioned magic trick.
This obviously isn’t how things went down, and that’s likely the reason why Melaris has since distanced himself from everyone else involved with the project. Yet, no amount of behind-the-scenes drama can undermine the genuine effort that went into making the short as impressive as it is. From the sourcing of real animal organs from a local butcher to make the organic part of the creature more lifelike to the highly detailed sculpt that made use of a hollowed-out underlayer that could be filled with fake blood and assorted viscera, there’s a reason why so many Hollywood specialists are still impressed with the artistry on display here.
Of course, the believability is only half the story, as I think that the best part of the autopsy is how Melaris builds on the existing tension by obscuring certain details and often embracing the chaos of what a real examination of extraterrestrial life could feel like. The camera often goes out of focus at just the right time to make certain effects hit even harder, and we can only speculate as to what the hazmat-suited doctors are gesticulating about during the operation. There’s a real air of mystery to the whole thing that almost makes it feel like a cosmically terrifying, cursed film containing forbidden knowledge that civilians were never meant to see.
So when Fox’s Fact or Fiction brings in the specialists to comment on the film and its otherworldly subject, it’s no surprise that we end up with one of the most memorable mockumentaries of all time – albeit one where the participants are unaware that the footage they’re commenting on is basically a large-scale practical joke. A joke that the network was obviously in on, as many participants claim that the TV special cut out significant portions where guests point out that they believe the footage to be an elaborate hoax.
The Lasting Impact of the Hoax Turned Cultural Event
Regardless, I remember going to bed terrified after watching reruns of the special and thinking about the respected pathologist who claimed that the body was almost certainly inhuman, with even effects maestro Stan Winston commenting on how difficult it would be to recreate some of these visuals through practical puppetry. That’s not even mentioning Jonathan Frakes’ dramatic hyping up of the disturbing imagery as if he was talking about the tape from The Ring, with his spooky demeanor here likely being responsible for his later role as the host of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction a few years later.
Personally, I’d argue that the Alien Autopsy phenomenon had just as much of an impact on me as a horror fan as The Blair Witch Project, a film that was almost certainly influenced by the success of this immensely popular hoax (to the point where they even produced their own TV special commenting on Heather’s found footage). Even if Fox didn’t intend to produce a narrative feature about the aftermath of the Roswell crash, the end product still holds up remarkably well as a highly entertaining mockumentary exploring the idea that we may not be alone in the universe.
While neither Santilli nor the rest of the production team has ever commented on this, I also think it’s very likely that the idea of a faux Alien Autopsy could have been influenced by Dean Alioto’s The McPherson Tape/UFO Abduction. I’ve already written about how this granddaddy of found footage was co-opted by rogue ufologists who began selling bootlegs of the tape at conventions as if it were real evidence of a close encounter, so it’s not that much of a stretch to imagine that Santilli and company could have heard about this phenomenon and been inspired to come up with their own highly profitable hoax.
At the end of the day, it’s unlikely that the Alien Autopsy film is recreating any real footage from Roswell, but I can still appreciate the short and the accompanying television event as a standalone horror story that still influences the way we see found footage to this very day.
After all, the possibility that something could be real is often much scarier than finding out for sure – and that’s why I think Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction is still worth revisiting three decades down the line.
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