Juno (The Horror Guy)

my name is juno. i watched my first horror movie at the ripe age of seven. i was a young girl who had maybe one friend to her name and unrestricted internet access thanks to her full-time working mother and lack of father figure. i found the most recent Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie that had been released, and having nothing better do to, i sat through it and now i am here.

i won't say that movie necessarily shaped who i became into my older years, but i also won't deny it. i have grown up, and horror has stayed one of the only consistencies in my life. i am a queer man living in a rural Canadian town who has more than one friend and more opportunity than i did at seven, but now i have a refined palette for movies, especially in the horror genre. not much of that is relevant to this blog, except maybe that last part, but sharing is caring.

some people may argue the semantics of me referring to horror movies as 'refined', especially with how they have been treated by hollywood in the past, but to that i say: fuck off. horror is one of those genres where if it isn't done right, it doesn't work. it's like comedy in that way; you need a good balance to have a good movie. there is a reason why Sinners was nominated for as many awards as it was at the last Oscars.

as for what i plan to do on this blog? i plan to talk. if you couldn't tell, i like to talk. i like to talk about my interests, and the biggest one of those is the horror genre. so, i've decided to take my opinions onto tumblr to be scrutinized by those older and wiser than myself.

i plan to review movies as i watch or rewatch them. i'll give my recap of the plot, how i feel about the movie and what it stands for, a star rating (whether out of 5 or 10 i have yet to decide), and maybe some fun rankings as i go along. as i get more used to posting here, as this is my first tumblr blog i am actually posting on, i assume my posts will become more polished and less all over the place as this one is. i hope for people to take interest in what i say, but alas, i am just a guy on the internet.

as for what i don't want on this blog, i'll make it obvious. if you are MAGA/Republican, Homo/Transphobic/Racist/Xenophobic in general, pro-life/anti-choice, misogynistic, or just an asshole in general, get off my blog. i'm generally averse to interacting with internet discourse, but i'm not fond of those who don't think people like myself should be allowed to live their life to the fullest. likewise, i will tag my posts according to triggering things present, but if you think that any content that might be on my blog would be harmful to you, i would refrain from interacting. i believe media should not be censored, so i will not be sugarcoating what is in the movies i talk about, and horror is one of those genres where many things that may be triggering to people are on the table. please, keep yourself safe and do not engage with media that will harm you.

i'm not sure when my first actual review will be, but it will be here eventually. if all goes according to plan, it'll be a mostly lighthearted film to ease myself into the tumblr format, so stay tuned for that.

i'm reviewing this in honour of a friend of mine, who has been begging to watch the first Saw movie with me and his boyfriend for at least a month. here you go, Kai, you get a review.

this is the OG torture porn film. to those who are less versed in the horror subgenres, "torture porn" is what we call horror movies where the main focus and terror of the movie is, well, torture. Eli Roth's Hostel and Tom Six's The Human Centipede are glaring examples of this genre. this is also around the time 9/11 happened, and the revelation of how prisoners of war over in the Middle East were being treated by captors. due to the unfortunate correlations between the two events, horror movies were once again the victims of a major moral panic in society.

Saw was created as Leigh Whannell and James Wan's first feature film out of film school. to pitch the film, Whannell starred in a short film that provided us with our first view of the reverse bear trap, undoubtedly the most iconic trap in all of the franchise, and of Billy the Puppet, the mascot of the Saw franchise.

the thing about this movie is that there really is no "main character." at the beginning, you think the main characters are Adam and Gordon, but then we're introduced to Detectives Tapp and Singh, and then we're cutting between both plots with sprinklings of flashbacks (which are one of the defining features of these films), but none of them feel really like the "main character." it doesn't effect the enjoyment of the movie, but some people won't be at all used to it, especially if they've seen other horror movies and are experienced in the Final Girl trope.

the movie begins underwater. as in, in a tub filled with water. we see a light in the water, which is attached to a key. it's floating, and then the drain is pulled by the man struggling to get out of the tub. the key goes down the drain. man, i sure hope this doesn't come back to bite any of our main characters in the ass!

when we emerge from the water, it's to a blue lighted room meant to represent darkness. here, we get our first look at one of our leads; Adam. he was the one who was in the water. he's obviously distressed about being in a dark room. there's another voice there, who answers Adam's calls, and then finally finds the lightswitch and we get to see the whole room.

props to Whannell and Wan and whoever else did set design, because this bathroom looks like actual hell. i can smell it from the other side of the screen. it's prime opportunity for an escape room, i can see why it's one of the most iconic saw traps.

lights are now on. notable things about the bathroom are flashed to: we see Lawrence Gordon (he's a doctor), the other guy in the room. well, not counting the dead one right between the two alive ones, revolver in one hand and cassette player in the other. and we see that both Adam and Gordon have one of their legs chained to pipes on opposite ends of the bathroom. the intro to the bathroom trap is our first view of how the Saw movies are shot: they're filled with dramatic cuts and flashes of lights and all that fun stuff. such an iconic type of camerawork that the moment you see it, you know what movie you're watching.

Adam and Gordon both have tapes in their pockets. using his shirt and the drain from the tub he awoke in, Adam retrieves the tape player from the dead guy, while Gordon keeps talking for the sake of talking. i don't think i could last in a room with that guy, i would be begging Jigsaw to just end my misery.

Adam plays his tape. it implies that he's there because he acts as a voyeur in his own life, and Jigsaw wants him to take control of his fate or die. Gordon throws his tape over to Adam (he throws it overhand, without any regard to the fact it could have fallen in the toilet, or the bathtub drain, or anything), and his says that he needs to kill Adam by 6:00, or else his wife and daughter die.

we (as in, Gordon and Adam) get a couple clues as well to things in the room, escape-room style. gordon's tape says that the dead guy killed himself, because "when there's that much poison in your blood, the only thing left to do is shoot yourself." there is also an X marks the spot line, and at the end, Jigsaw tells Gordon to "follow your heart."

there is a heart graphic written on the toilet tank in shit beside Adam. being the dumbass he is, Adam decides to go hand-first into the toilet bowl filled with (apparently liquid??) shit, and finds nothing. how shocking, the bag the clue led to was in the tank, where the heart was drawn on.

the bag has two hacksaws in it. Adam throws one to Lawrence and they both try to saw the shackle on their legs. Adam goes for the chain, while Gordon goes for the actual padlock, but neither work. in fact, Adam's saw fully breaks because he's too rough with it, and Jigsaw apparently didn't want to pay full price for actual decent hacksaws for his death trap.

Gordon then has an epiphany- he knows who put them in the bathroom. the Jigsaw Killer. ("well, not really a killer. he never killed anyone." oh sure Gordon, tell that to your wife and daughter when he kills them.)

our first flashback. our Cop Plot(tm). we meet Detectives Tapp, Singh, and Kerry. Kerry isn't a big character in this, but keep her in mind for future films; she becomes a bigger character later.

we also get our second Jigsaw trap, and our first dead Jigsaw victim. his name is Paul, and he self-harmed. because of this, Jigsaw put him into the Barbed Wire Maze, in which Paul has to navigate his way out of barbed wire with a time limit of 2 hours before the door to the room is closed and locked. he failed, obviously.

and THEN, we get ANOTHER trap and ANOTHER dead Jigsaw victim! this guy's name is Mark, and his trap pissed me off. he's put in this trap because he faked being sick and took advantage of his insurance (i believe?), and for that, Jigsaw placed him in a room where he has to step on broken glass, covered in flammable jelly, with a candle in hand as his only light source, and he needs to use this candle on the walls of the room (which ars covered in numbers, floor to ceiling) and find a four-or-six digit code to the safe which hold the antidote for the poison Jigsaw put into his system (because he couldn't just be set on fire, no, he needed to be poisoned too) before he burns alive via candle or dies via poison. no shit he failed, how the fuck do you survive this. there is no way to figure out which code is right except for trial and error.

but here, there is a hole in the wall, where detectives assume Jigsaw watched the victim do his trap. they also find a penlight, which, shocking twist, belongs to one Lawrence Gordon (the doctor).

we get another flashback kind of in the flashback, where we see Lawrence Gordon doing his doctor stuff. he's showing some residents/students a patient by the name of John Kramer, who has terminal brain cancer. Gordon doesn't really give a shit about Kramer except for his cancer, where we also meet Zepp Hindle, an orderly. he's like "mr. kramer is a very interesting man" or whatever, and Gordon is like "okay zepp, get the fuck out now."

i love zepp, he's my second favourite apprentice. half because of michael emerson, half because he's just so stupid in this movie it endeared me to him.

Gordon gets taken into the police precinct by Tapp and Singh because he's a suspect, and Gordon watches Tapp and Singh interview Amanda Young, the only current survivor of the Jigsaw Killer. her trap is the most iconic (the reverse bear trap), and she needed to get a key out of a "dead" man's entrails. only, the man wasn't dead, he was just overdosing on opioids. still conscious, though.

alas, Amanda completes her trap, gets out of the bear trap, and is alive for this interview. although, instead of hating Jigsaw like we assume she would, she instead proclaims that he "saved her" from her drug addiction (the reason she was put in the trap.)

back to the bathroom! Adam discovers the mirror in the bathroom is not, in fact, a mirror, but is instead a one-way window, and he breaks it to find that they were being watched by the person who is holding them in the bathroom.

another flashback. we see Gordon in his home. he is typing (very slowly. somebody didn't take his typing lessons seriously ....). we meet his wife, Allison, and their daughter, Diana. Diana had a nightmare, and so Allison tells Gordon that their daughter wanted him to check her closet. we can gather from this interaction that Gordon and Allison aren't exactly the picture-perfect married couple, but Gordon cares for his daughter. So, he goes and checks under her bed for monsters, then puts her to sleep after playing "This Little Piggy" with her.

(see it's. it's funny because. because the apprentices use pig masks to kidnap people. and. and gordon gets kidnapped by someone in a pig mask. hahahahah. laugh.)

he didn't check her closet, though, when his pager goes off and he has to leave her. so we get a very Black Christmas-esque shot of an eye peeking out of her closet. spoookkyyyy.

the guy in the closet then abducts Allison and Diana. and is teasing them with the gun he has. he also has a stethoscope, and is holding it to Diana's chest while waving the gun around to hear her heartbeat go up.

we also see that Detective Tapp is stalking Gordon's apartment, and we get an insane transition shot to yet another flashback, where Tapp is driving Gordon home from the precinct. Gordon was let go due to lack of evidence.

Tapp and Singh are then back at the precinct, where Tapp is combing through security footage or something. Singh wants to head down to the Grill (a restaurant. or a pub. i don't remember.) but Tapp is determined to finish this case. he finds a gang symbol that is apparently only in a certain area of town, so they have a clue, and there's a fire alarm in the background, so Singh and Tapp deduce that the footage is from a mannequin factory.

they head down, and they were RIGHT! there's a model of the bathroom that Adam and Gordon are stuck in, along with a dude in a trap. hes gonna get drilled in the neck. Jigsaw put him there as a test subject or whatever. Jigsaw is also there, and he starts the trap, giving the detectives an ultimatum of "either save that guy or arrest me. make your choice." and runs away.

after a minute, Singh just shoots the trap and stops it. Tapp goes after Jigsaw and gets his throat slit, and he runs again. Singh is shooting at him and then runs after him, and then gets decapitated via shotgun.

so Tapp is kind of insane. Tapp is alive, by the way, the throat slit was just a flesh wound. he's talking to Singh while stalking Gordon's apartment, and he sees someone in the window and assumes that Allison is having an affair.

cut to: parking garage with Gordon. he is meeting with a woman who was a resident/student that Gordon is having an affair with? he calls the affair off so he never cheated (that we know of. he probably did) and then PLOT TWIST Adam was hired to spy on Gordon by DETECTIVE TAPP. so he knows that Gordon is having an affair and in the bag that had the hacksaws in it earlier there were also pictures that Adam took of Gordon. and then Gordon gets abducted by Jigsaw in a pig mask while trying to get a ringing phone.

back to bathroom. Gordon and Adam have some bonding time and Gordon shows Adam his wallet with his wife and daughter in it. only instead there's a photo of Allison and Diana tied up with a clue about seeing better with your eyes shut, so Adam's like "turn the light off man." and Lawrence does. there's an X painted on a wall. the wall gets broken and there is a box inside. there was a key like at the beginning in Gordon's envelope with his tape in it so he uses it on the box and there is a phone and two cigarettes and a lighter inside. the cellphone is a one-way and only recieves calls. there is also a note implying to dip the cigarette in the blood of the guy and give it to Adam because the poison blood was a literal thing. the blood is poisoned.

Gordon and Adam have a plan. Gordon turns the lights off and they conspire and then Adam takes the cigarette and pretends to die (very dramatically. it's not believable at all). and then he gets electrocuted via foot chain and stops pretending.

FLASHBACK!! we see Adam in his shithole apartment, where he sleeps only to wake up to a blackout. and it's black. our only source of light is Adam's camera flash and then PIG MASK!! we see Adam get kidnapped and then he wakes up in an actual shithole (the bathroom). also: we hear Billy the Puppet's laugh!

oh no it's 6:00 now. Gordon's family needs to die now. and then we find out that it's ZEPP?? ZEPP IS THE GUY WHO IS HOLDING ALLISON AND DIANA HOSTAGE??? ZEPP IS JIGSAW?? woah....

he goes to kill Allison and Diana but Allison is out of her binds. she fights with Zepp and the gun goes off so Tapp is like "oh shiiiit" and rushes over. Zepp runs off to kill Gordon and Tapp follows him and we get a random neighbor family show up for Allison and Diana before CAR CHASE.

(it's a very fake car chase. you can tell they aren't actually moving. but it's still awesome, man.)

Gordon decides to finally take action and cut off his foot. Gordon then crawls over to the gun and then shoots Adam. is Adam dead? maybe. maybe not. (...he's not.)

Zepp shows up to kill Gordon but WOW!! Adam is alive and beats Zepp with a toilet tank lid. and i mean he BEATS him with that lid. then Adam and Gordon have a tender moment and the foreheads touch. #chainshipping

Gordon crawls away to get help and Adam is left in the bathroom. Alone. With two dead bodies. he finds a tape in Zepp's pocket, and this is when we find out that Zepp was ALSO a victim and was being tested. he had poison in his blood and was going to die unless he did what he did. suuuper montage of the entire movie. plus Hello Zepp is playing. fuck yeah.

...but wait. in the background behind Adam we see someone get up. not Zepp.... the other guy with poison blood. it's JOHN FUCKING KRAMER AND HE'S JIGSAW AND HE LAID THERE FOR LIKE SIX FUCKING HOURS.

Adam is in shock. the audience is in shock. that latex must have hurt like hell to remove. and then John tells Adam that the key was IN THE BATHTUB AND THAT WAS THE KEY WE SAW AT THE BEGINNING. and we get our iconic "Game Over" as John Kramer slams the door to the bathroom shut and traps Adam in there. in the darkness. as Adam screams and the credits role. end movie.

this movie was so long. so much happened. but is it entertaining? on my 1-10 scale of how much i enjoyed watching this i rate it a 10/10. god i love this movie. Zepp Hindle is the best apprentice ever (even if he technically isn't one) and i will die on this hill. scare factor, i'll give it a 6/10. maybe a bit low? the real scary stuff is the fact that anyone could be put into a trap. plus there are jumpscares.

TRIGGER WARNINGS. believe it or not, there isn't that much gore, but still probably shouldn't watch if you're at all squeamish. there are jumpscares, there are puppets, there is implied suicide (even though he didn't actually do it), and Jigsaw puts a guy in a trap because he's suicidal "without a reason." so, be careful. there's gagging, there's a guy rummaging around in shit in one scene, there's stalking, Zepp is a bit of a psycho in this, and there's a LOT of paranoia and overall fear.

what movie is next .... i actually don't know. i'll see if i can get Audition out at some point, or i may do Candyman like i said i would. this was really long, okay. i'll try to get another out before the end of June, but my time is mostly occupied with school.

as always, requests are open for future movies to review. use the ask box to demand i watch films and rate them. cuz i will.