So the very early estimates are in, and the wide-release debut of Paranormal Activity (1,945 screens) appears to have defeated the opening weekend of Saw VI. Ironically, the long-running series has appeared to have fallen victim to the 'Tomb Raider trap', as the sixth chapter is allegedly a marked improvement over the last two sequels (my wife and I usually see these on opening day as a tradition, but real life got in the way). Frankly I was shocked that Saw V opened at near $31 million last year, as pretty much everyone detested the fourth chapter. So Saw VI opened with only $7 million (about 50% down from the $14 million opening days of Saw IV and Saw V) while Paranormal Activity added another $7.6 million to its stunning run. Unless Paranormal Activity collapses after Halloween (a reasonable possibility), it will have a solid shot at crossing the $100 million mark. The Saw series, while wounded (this will likely be the smallest opening weekend in franchise history), is still a relatively low-budget tentpole series that can more than weather a hit or two. I'd be shocked if Saw VI cost even $15 million, so even a quick-collapse and $35 million final gross will still be quite profitable, especially when overseas and home video is counted in. Theoretically, the fewer fans who went to a theater meant that the more who will rent it on DVD in January.So fine, the series has finally shed a little blood six films in. About $3-4 million of that lost $7 million can be directly attributed to demographic and genre competition, something that the Saw series has not faced since 2004. But can we please stop whining about how the Saw franchise is somehow contributing to the destruction of modern society? First of all, it's not actually torture porn. Not a single person actually gets tortured in a Saw picture. Yes, some characters suffer for a few minutes before death in any given Saw film, but that's not torture and that's commonplace in any number of horror films (by that definition, Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy or Psycho are torture porn films). You want true torture porn? Rent the 'adult and sophisticated' Diane Lane vehicle Untraceable. That film revels in long, painful death scenes where victims are slowly bled, burned, or electrocuted for hours and then tells us that we're evil for wanting to watch.
As far as rotting society's fabric, let's look at a quick list of things that the Saw series is not responsible for... Jigsaw did not tell us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, resulting in a years-long foreign occupation that has perhaps permanently destroyed the moral character of an entire country. He did not coerce people to buy varying-rate interest mortgages that they could not afford, he did not drive up the price of oil via speculative trading, he did not deregulate the entire financial industry, he didn't loosen the rules for media ownership, he did not create or enforce Don't Ask Don't Tell, he did not out an undercover CIA agent for political gain, he did not subsidize corn products to the point where nearly every single manufactured food has some form of corn, he did not commit white collar crimes that cost Americans billions in financial devastation, and he did not delay the federal response to hurricane Katrina in the hopes that the press would blame the sitting state and local government. Oh, and John Kramer didn't kill the Lindbergh baby, Chandra Levy, or Jonbenet Ramsey. And he absolutely did not leak a DVD work-print of X-Men Origins: Wolverine a month before the release.
Now here are some positive things that the massive profits of the Saw franchise have brought us - consistent work and unimaginable fame for Tobin Bell, several years of successful blood drives each October, and the production and/or distribution of 3:10 To Yuma, Akeelah and the Bee, Away From Her, The Bank Job, Battle For Terra, Bug, The Cove, Crash, The Descent, Lord of War, Sicko, The US vs John Lennon, and W. And those are just my favorites. The Saw series is a flawed but ambitious horror franchise with a somewhat conflicted moral compass. Period. It does not teach kids to kill, it does not warp impressionable minds, it does not contribute to any real suffering that goes on in the world. So stop whining because in thirty-years film scholars will be discussing Saw with the same adulteration that we now discuss A Nightmare On Elm Street and/or Halloween.
Scott Mendelson
