Saw VI

When comparing Saw VI to Saw V find myself in a conflict. Is it worse to have no substance, or to utterly fail in your attempt to bring substance? As with the previous film we have a series of traps that only tangentially tie into the main story, while Hoffman's (Costas Mandylor) story continues in parallel. This time, however, we get a few more shots of Hoffman watching the victims.

This movie came out in 2009, five months before the Affordable Care Act was passed. So, the filmmakers gave us a Saw movie designed to beat you over the head with the need for healthcare reform. I certainly agree with this message, but John Kramer (Tobin Bell, in recordings and flashbacks) is not the person I want lecturing me about it.

That said, this is clearly a movie that had a lot more effort put into it than the material really called for. I particularly loved Shauna MacDonald and Devon Bostick in minor roles as a mother and son (will elaborate on that later). It's clear that both of them put their heart and souls into these roles.

It's at this point that we're really getting a sense of how unbelievably petty Jigsaw was in life. An insurance executive named William Easton (Peter Outerbridge) is selected for a game because he didn't let John take part in an experimental treatment for his cancer...oh, sorry, he's selected for a game because he “chooses who lives and who dies” without considering “the will to live.” So, all of his traps are themed around the idea of choosing who he could save. He experiences four traps, two of which pit his survival against someone else's, and another two simply make him choose between victims.

Eventually, having made it through the traps, William comes to a an enclosed room. He can see his sister on one side (Samantha Lemole), and Tara and Brent (MacDonald and Bostic) on the other. Tara and Brent are the wife and son of a man William denied coverage to based on an application mistake. They have been watching his entire journey through a monitor, and are told to decide whether or not to throw a switch that will kill William.

Tara attempts to rationalize this by arguing that William might deny someone else coverage (...as opposed to the person that the company will hire to replace him doing it?...), but it ultimately unable to kill him. Brent then steps forward and pulls the switch for no reason other than pure revenge, injecting William with dozens of syringes of acid to dissolve him. I'm a bit surprised Brent didn't face any consequences himself for doing this, given Jigsaw's past distaste for revenge, but apparently he believed Brent had suffered enough.

While I don't want to go into every trap, there are two theories about this film that I think need to be addressed. The first is the theory that William's test was designed so that, if he had acted differently and abandoned his existing way of thinking, all of the victims might have survived. Each trap has a specific theory about how this would have been possible, and the theories vary in terms of plausibility. Most notably in the single largest trap, a carousel with six victims and a shotgun that can be directed upward when William pushes one of two buttons and stabs himself in the hand, we're told by Jigsaw that “only two” can survive. There is absolutely no evidence other than Jigsaw's word that all six can't be saved by pushing the buttons repeatedly, and William makes no effort to go against Jigsaw's claim.

The other theory is that Brent killed William out of a belief that his father's death was related to sexism. Notably, over the course of the film two women die, along with five men, and three women are saved. The fact that William never saves a single man is commented on exactly once. At the end of the aforementioned carousel trap, William chooses to save two women. The latter of the two claims to be pregnant, and the final surviving man, now doomed, yells “a bitch says one thing and it's all over!”

Whether or not William is actually sexist is open for debate. Either way, I do like the theory that Brent thought he was. It means that William's actions in the test did, at minimum, have some influence over Brent's decision. The story isn't as interesting if there was literally nothing he could do to save himself.

This is probably Hoffman's finest film, mainly because it's the first film in which he's legitimately challenged. Hoffman continues in his attempts to frame Strahm, but reality ensues and the police are able to detect indications of the frame-up. By the end of the film Hoffman has been found-out, killed several other police officers, and been forced to go on the run.

More importantly, we find out that John promised his fiance Jill (Betsy Russell) “a way out.” He left her the reverse bear-trap from the first film. After his escape, she tasers Hoffman, straps him to a chair, and attaches it without a key. He's able to escape by breaking his hand, and ripping open his cheek.

Whatever you think of the rest of the film, Hoffman escaping from that trap is one of the most legitimately badass things ever seen in this series. It's the thing that made me oddly root for him entering the final film of the series. Even more so, because Jill left the room, saying “Game Over.” There's exactly one other character in this entire series who overcame a “Game Over” (discussed in the next film), so Hoffman's status is fairly elite.

Ultimately, I feel I have to judge these stories separately. The main story, William's, is a political rant disguised as a story not worth telling, but told extremely well. However, Hoffman's story is down-right compelling, even as Hoffman is a truly despicable human being.

Overall, I'd say this is the first Saw film to represent a real uptick over the previous movie. It is more enjoyable than V easily, even if it fails by any normal standard of filmmaking. It has all the subtlety of a sack of bricks to the head, but at least that's something, where V was simply a bore.

Saw V

I can definitely see why this film is usually thought of as one of the weaker in the series. This is the point at which the series officially gave up on trying to tie it's stories together. In the previous four films we saw a series of traps that had some connection to the main story. In this film we get a series of traps that are going on parallel to the main story, with very little interaction. We see that Hoffman (Costas Mandylor, again) is aware of the traps, but that's about it.

I'd actually say that this film, more than any other in the series, is the point at which the writers have no clear idea where they're going. We see a group of people being tested, we get Hoffman's backstory, and we continue to follow Agent Strahm (Scott Patterson) as he hunts for the identity of the Jigsaw killers. None of these threads really seem to go anywhere.

The victims of the traps are eventually revealed to be people Jigsaw (Tobin Bell, duh) blames for a fire that killed eight people. The traps in this movie were designed to be most easily won if the victims worked together. Instead, by fighting each other for survival, only two of them were able to get out alive (Julie Benz and Greg Bryk), and only that with great difficulty. This doesn't tie into any other current or future story-lines as best I can tell, except that one of the two survivors shows up for a cameo in the final movie.

It also doesn't help that all of the surviving victims have equal freedom of movement after the first trap. Because of this, the driving force of the traps is consistently the same: If a task isn't completed by a certain time, nail-bombs will go off and kill all the surviving victims. Having a single victim in a trap at a time was far more effective in previous and future films. Furthermore, constricting victims in different ways meant many of the traps could be tailored to a specific victim. Not so here.

The story of Strahm is interesting, but...well...he dies at the end of this movie, being framed as the second Apprentice. Quite frankly, he dies in an unbelievably stupid way. He's told by a Jigsaw recording that he has to get into a bulletproof box full of shattered glass to survive, and so he forces Hoffman in. Apparently it didn't occur to him that the glass box might have been a means of survival. Furthermore, as Jigsaw traps go, laying on glass until the walls close in and kill whoever else is in the room seems like an unbelievably generous opportunity. Strahm is just dumb.

Also, framing a dead person for an ongoing murder-spree seems nonsensical to me. Even if his body is never found, how long could the theory “Strahm is still in the same city, but no one has seen him in all this time” really seem plausible? Certainly at some point in the next ten years someone would consider the possibility that they had the wrong man pegged for the second Apprentice. It seems like it would have been far more effective with some hint Hoffman planned on retiring soon, but if that was the implication I didn't catch it.

The final plotline, Hoffman's origin as an Apprentice, doesn't fail in and of itself, but still fails in relation to Hoffman's overall arc. We see who Hoffman was. He was an alcoholic cop who made an inescapable Jigsaw trap to punish the man who killed his sister (Joris Jarsky). This led to Jigsaw recruiting him as an Apprentice.

The problem here is that, even seeing this story, I have no idea who Hoffman is now. It's clear that John had an effect on him, but I'm not sure what that effect was. He never shows any particular sign of caring about the rehabilitation of his victims, and his primary goals always seem to be evading detection. I don't see an endgame for Hoffman the way I did for Jigsaw. Where Jigsaw seemed detached, Hoffman seems far too indifferent to be dedicating his time to this matter.

As for the traps of this movie, it's like they combined the overly-elaborate nature of the later films' traps, with the relatively non-graphic nature of the original Saw. Most of the deaths are quick, and only a few traps have any especially graphic elements. I have no idea what they were going for, but you don't get to use nail-bombs and decapitating collars and claim a return to subtlety.

So, can the characters save it? Not really. None of the characters are as well-established as in previous Saw films, and their personalities even seem to change scene to scene. One man (Carlo Rota) goes from the voice of reason to a Social Darwinist over the course of a few minutes for no adequately explained reason.

One thing of merit I did find in this movie is a possible homage to the original Dracula film with Bela Lugosi. It's a bit of a stretch, but both films have scenes following a similar structure: A horror icon is standing over a subordinate he's in the process of recruiting. He then makes a dramatically significant statement with an independent clause, followed by a pause, and then a subordinate clause.

“I never drink...wine...”

“Killing is distasteful!...to me!”

This is probably the first Saw film I can safely say is not simply “bad” from some snobby artistic level, but is just downright uninteresting. I find it quite depressing that it's the one that got Julie Benz, who's truly wasted here. If you marathon the series, fast forward through anything not involving Hoffman or Strahm.

...oh, and the final trap is based around the idea that there's a specific amount of blood a human body can lose without dying, regardless of body weight. That's just stupid.

Saw IV

It's a testament to how good the original Saw was that the series can fall so far and still not actually be “bad.” Saw IV was basically a scramble to keep the story going longer, but it largely ends up over-compensating with far too much story. The biggest losses are, of course, Tobin Bell and Shawnee Smith as John “Jigsaw” Kramer and Amanda Young. From this point forward in the franchise their appearances are limited to flashbacks.

Beyond that, at this point the films become more like a soap opera than a series of standalone films. It's not simply that the story is serialized, but that the storylines no longer have the weight to justify individual movies. While the only Saw film I've seen in theatres is The Final Chapter, I imagine it must have been frustrating to wait an entire year for the next of what feels more like an episode in a weekly series than a yearly movie franchise.

If there is an A-plot to this movie it's the attempted recruitment of a new Apprentice. Detective Daniel Rigg (Lyriq Bent), a man whose personal life has suffered because of his obsession with trying to save as many people as possible, is taken and put through a series of traps. Rather than trying to save his own life, Rigg is told that Detective Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) is still alive, in a trap with Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor), and only the tests can lead Rigg to them.

Rigg is shown a series of people guilty of horrible crimes. In each case, Riggs has to decide whether or not to interfere with the traps, and in one case whether or not to initiate a trap himself. Meanwhile we periodically get shots of Matthews standing on a block of ice with a noose around his neck, while Hoffman hovers above electrified water next to him, and a mysterious figure works around them. At the same time, Detectives Strahm and Perez (Scott Patterson and Athena Karkanis) attempt to follow Rigg's trail of bodies, and interrogate Jigsaw's ex-wife Jill Tuck (Betsy Russell), as they draw the conclusion that Jigsaw may have had a second Apprentice.

If anyone hasn't watched vlogger Welshy's retrospective of the Saw series, I think he nailed it for this entry (sadly the series is incomplete, as Welshy left Channel Awesome). The movie has so much story that it seems to move at a frantic pace, with no real regard for the characters. Most notably, we never really get a sense of Rigg's emotional journey. After each of his tests are completed we cut away, not giving him time to reflect on the “lesson” he's supposed to be learning. Or, if he is reflecting, we don't see it.

There are two major pay-offs for all these plotlines. The first is the reveal that Rigg's test was designed to punish him for refusing to “let go.” Matthews' trap went off when Rigg arrived in less than ninety minutes, killing Matthews because Rigg charged in trying to be a hero. The second is that Hoffman is Jigsaw's second Apprentice (in a stroke of genius, his trap looked scary, but would be unlikely to actually kill him when he's ungrounded). The mysterious individual holding them was actually a patsy named Art Blank (Justin Louis), trapped by a device strapped to his back designed to kill him if he disobeys orders, much like Zep from the first film.

Starting with this film it becomes increasingly difficult to tell just which traps were set up by which Jigsaws. The events of these final films happen in close proximity, so there's no real reason to assume that Amanda didn't set them up on John's orders before dying. In fact, the final moments of this film establish most of it's plot as happening simultaneously with Saw III, meaning John and Amanda are still alive. Or, Hoffman might be setting them up. The Final Chapter complicates this matter further, but I'll get to that in time.

During the interview scenes with Jill we get a number of flashback to John's history. It's true these were clearly written to keep Tobin Bell in the franchise, but they still fit very well with the story. It really is quite amazing how much of a coherent narrative the writers were able to produce for the franchise while writing by the seat of their pants. They show us John's descent into madness, and the tragic events that led up to it. Tobin Bell is still, by far, the best actor in this entire franchise. If he was in a drama rather than a horror movie there's a very real possibility his performance would have merited Oscar consideration.

I should probably also comment on Hoffman, even if it's later films that establish his history and motivations. I like him a lot as a villain. While certainly he's no John Kramer, even with his reveal as the villain coming at the end of this film I can already tell that he's a cunning schemer. He's neither as honorable as Jigsaw, nor as demented as Amanda.

I also want to comment on Angus Macfayden's return as Jeff. It was one of the biggest “Screw You”s I've ever seen to the audience. Because the two films happen mostly in parallel, Strahm ends up walking in on and shooting him in a scene that takes place immediately after the events of Saw III. I know this franchise was largely written on-the-fly, and fan reactions were a major influence, so I'm guessing fans didn't like the character much, and he was dispatched casually.

It's still a cop-out, though. The ending of Saw III clearly set up a story of Jeff desperately trying to save his daughter in time. Instead, she's saved by Hoffman in a single scene in the next movie (yeah, spoiler, but whatever). For God's sake, if your set-up doesn't please your audience, make it up in the pay-off. Don't just throw out a major sub-plot after making it so critical to the cliffhanger of the previous movie!

Saw IV is a film I recommend as part of a marathon. Rigg has the only story-line that feels remotely complete without the previous or following movies, and that story in and of itself doesn't hold a candle to the previous three films, feeling a level of tension I'd more associate with a television episode than a film the audience waited a year for. It's far from terrible, but the series is on the downslide.

Saw III

Saw III was the first sequel to have been planned in the writing of the previous movie. It picks up immediately where the Saw II left off. Detective Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) is still shackled in the bathroom from the first film, and has to crush his own foot to escape from the chains.

We’re then given our opening trap in flashback, as the police investigate it. This sets up a mystery for the movie: someone is making inescapable traps, completely contrary to Jigsaw’s philosophy. It’s a point that seems forgotten for most of the movie, only becoming significant at the end. A nice little Chekov's Gun.

In Saw II the narrative was driven by two games, but the point of only one was made entirely clear from the beginning. For III there are two games, with far more obvious purposes. A man named Jeff (Angus Macfadyen), whose son died in a tragic car accident, is put through a series of traps in which he must decide whether or not to save the people he blames for his suffering. First, a witness who ran and failed to testify (Debra Lynne McCabe), then the judge who let the driver off with a light sentence (Barry Flatman), and finally the driver himself (Mpho Koaho).

Meanwhile, a young doctor named Lynn (Bahar Soomekh) is captured by Amanda (Shawnee Smith again), and forced to care for John “Jigsaw” Kramer (Tobin Bell, awesome as always). While she has no specific knowledge of Jeff’s game, she’s tied to it: She’s wearing a collar with shotgun shells, set to go off if John’s heart stops. She’s told that if John lives long enough for the game to finish, she’ll be released.

Lynn's game works as a much more grounded, realistic horror story. Instead of the usual traps, we're treated to brain surgery with power tools, as Amanda refuses to move John to a hospital. The scenes are realistic enough to make you truly uncomfortable.

Strange as it sounds, I somewhat wish there had been a bit more filler in the early Saw series. This is the only film in which John and Amanda are alive and openly working together, and the results are palpable. Smith gives an amazing performance, in which she takes on the role of daughter to John, while coming across as an imposing, terrifying, and controlling figure to everyone else. I’d pay to watch a movie that was just them talking in between games.

For Jeff’s game, I’m not sure what to say. The traps are disturbing, but other movies have had worse, and none of them are especially gory for this series. The witness is frozen, the judge is (almost) drowned in the bodily fluids of pigs, and the driver has his limbs and neck twisted and broken. Each of the traps follows a basic pattern: Jeff is torn, forgives the person, and tries to save them.

He succeeds only in saving the judge, who is killed off accidentally in the driver’s trap by a stray bullet. I suspect that the judge was given a brief reprieve so that the audience wouldn’t assume failure was the only option. The writers clearly didn’t want any of the three victims sticking around for the climax, so his death comes across as just sloppy, and he contributes nothing. The possibility of him attempting to free the driver without Jeff’s assistance is never even mentioned, even though the judge has no particular grudge against the man.

McFadyen’s performance is good, as are the performances of the other victims. However, against Tobin Bell and Shawnee Smith in a Saw film, it’s nothing to write home about. The only scene that even sticks out in my mind is Jeff screaming “I forgive him!” as the driver dies.

Every article ever written on this movie has mentioned that it was originally intended to be the final entry in the series, and now so have I. Lions gate decided to continue the franchise, and the ending was hastily reshot. While we still get plenty of answers through flashback regarding the events of the previous films, we also get multiple cliffhangers.

Jeff and Lynn are husband and wife, driven apart by the loss of their child. Amanda was responsible for the inescapable traps, rejecting Jigsaw’s philosophy as anything more than a chance to vent her personal demons. When Jeff’s game ends, Amanda refuses to release Lynn, shooting and severely wounding her after a long monologue and flashback, being shot by Jeff in retaliation. However, Jigsaw covers a tape in wax and swallows it, showing he still has plans that continue past his death.

Detective Matthews is shown confronting and being further crippled by Amanda after a brief escape in flashback, with his death being edited out. Donnie Wahlberg was not happy about this, but he was eventually convinced to return for one final film. Given his initial dismissal of the franchise I find it odd that he cared so much what happened to the character.

The remaining cliffhanger was one that was resolved as an aside in the following film, but here seemed as if it would be the primary driving force going forward: Jeff kills John, causing his wife's collar to go off and finish her. He then finds out from a tape recorder that John had abducted his daughter, and she would die unless Jeff played another game. I assume this plotline was unpopular, but I do think it was a good twist that had potential.

For a movie that started out as the ending to the story, it somehow had one of the most dramatic endings of the series. Pure cliffhanger. Jigsaw is dead, but the story is far from over, and everyone is left on the edge of their seat for what John is planning from beyond the grave. While it's far from the best Saw film, it's ending is rivaled only by the original.

Saw II

Saw was an amazing film, but in many ways it left us with a blank slate. The film wrapped up all of its major storylines, while leaving Jigsaw alive, and a few minor tidbits that could later be written into a greater continuity. Saw II is where the franchise as it’s commonly remembered began. Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) is given a prominent role, the traps are much more elaborate and gory, the number of characters is vastly increased, and the story is clearly written with more intention of serialization.

The film once again follows two parallel narratives, but this time the two feel far more independent. The Police, led by Detective Eric Matthews (Donnie Walberg), capture Jigsaw (aka John Kramer). In the other narrative, a group of characters wake up in a strange house. This group includes Amanda (Shawnee Smith), a returning character presented briefly in the last film as a heroin addict who became the only Jigsaw survivor, and Daniel (Erik Knudsen), detective Matthews son.

Matthews, discovering that Jigsaw has taken his son, is told by the killer that he can see his son safely again if he agrees to sit and talk. Meanwhile (or so it seems), the people in the house are told by one of Jigsaw’s tape recorders that a the house will unlock in three hours, but they’ll all die from poisonous gas before then unless they navigate a series of traps to find syringes containing the antidote. The police can see this happening on monitors, but don’t know where it’s taking place.

Talking about every character in this film would take way too long, but suffice it to say that, like the original Saw, this is a story carried by the performances. The trap victims are mostly stereotypes (the prostitute, the reformed gang member, the thug, the petty criminal kid whose being scared straight by the real criminals…), but the actors are good enough that you don’t really care.

The traps vary in quality. The Venus Flytrap mask at the beginning just came across as downright silly. Other traps make more effective use of simple fire and blades. The best trap of the film by far required Amanda to crawl through used syringes to find a key (a trap intended for another victim).

The real star here, though, is Tobin. This is the movie that made Jigsaw an icon. Somehow the man manages to remain intimidating through nothing but dialogue while hooked up to an IV, and surrounded by a SWAT Team. Matthews tries every possible form of intimidation, but John is completely unphased. Meanwhile, he plays with Matthews’ head, accusing him of being a hothead guilty of police brutality.

The film does eventually try to connect the narratives, but it’s much weaker here than in the previous film: Matthews planted evidence on each of the victims, and Jigsaw planted a clue that Daniel was his son. I find this plot twist to be wholly unnecessary. Only one of the victims, Xavier (Franky G), ever actually attempts to harm Daniel, and Xavier was already a murderous thug with a motivation to try to kill everyone. After they’d failed at all the other traps, he could unlock a safe with the final syringe using numbers tattooed on the backs of each person’s neck. Did the writers think he needed a justification to try extra-hard to kill Daniel, specifically? “Your son is in a trap with people you planted evidence on” already seems Jigsaw-esque enough without the added complication.

The final twist of this film is now almost as well known as the previous film’s twist: The events in the house were prerecorded, Daniel was in the same building as Jigsaw locked in a safe, and Amanda had secretly become Jigsaw’s apprentice. Matthews fails his “test” by brutalizing Jigsaw for information, and is captured by Amanda to be dispatched in a later film, and Amanda escapes with Jigsaw.

Is this film as good as the first? Hell no, not even close. However, as a way of setting up a franchise, it worked far better. It's definitely worth a watch.

Saw

The first Saw was a good movie. Looking back at it now, having seen all 7, this is the only film that I can call “good” without reservation. The story is strong, so the plot holes don’t bother me that much. The performances are excellent, so I don’t mind how contrived the situations are. Beyond that, there’s a real sense of story-telling. While I may not like all his films, James Wan knows how to direct a movie.

Saw actually seems like something of an oddity in the series it spawned. Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) is in only a few scenes, with the identity of the Jigsaw killer being a mystery for most of the film. In later films Bell become so crucial to the success of the franchise they used extensive flashbacks in a desperate move to keep him in the series after Jigsaw's death. Here, however, the most prominent characters are Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) and Detective David Tapp (Danny Glover), mainly because the producers were able to get Cary Elwes and Danny Glover in a film that was supposed to go straight-to-DVD before the test audiences went nuts for it.

I’m also not the first nor the last person to note that this is the only film in the series in which Jigsaw personally uses a weapon with lethal intent against another human being. It seems downright bizarre, and it’s one of the few things that later films don’t even try to explain. I’ll freely admit it bothers the hell out of me, as it is something I can’t imagine the later Jigsaw doing. The plot makes far more sense if we just imagine that the cloaked man in that scene was Detective Hoffman from the later films disguising his voice.

The movie opens with Dr. Gordon waking up in a long-abandoned bathroom with a man named Adam (Leigh Whannell). Both are chained to the wall, with tapes, a tape recorder, and hacksaws that can’t cut through their chains, but could cut through their feet. Gordon is told that he has a limited period of time to kill Adam or his wife and daughter will both be killed. What appears to be a dead man is in the middle of the room, in a puddle of blood, holding a gun. While trying to find a way out, the two talk and we get a series of flashbacks gradually revealing the story. They’re being held by the Jigsaw Killer, a mysterious figure who places victims in elaborate traps with only the barest chance of escape, creating situations in which they kill themselves.

Doctor Gordon was a suspect in the case because his penlight was found at the scene of one of the traps, and the increasingly unstable, now discharged, Detective Tapp still believes he’s Jigsaw. Tapp’s storyline is shown to us in flashback parallel to Gordon's, as Tapp's partner (Ken Leung) is killed by a trap, and Tapp becomes obsessed with Gordon. We eventually discover that the detective is the connection between the two men, having hired Adam to follow and photograph Gordon.

We’re also treated to a few brief glimpses of Jigsaw’s traps, and some short scenes with Gordon’s wife and daughter (Monica Potter and Makenzie Vega) being held hostage by Zep (Michael Emerson), and employee at Gordon's hospital, and the decoy villain. These work well, the performances are all pretty good. They somehow manage to achieve more than the long asides used in later films in a fraction of the time.

I can see why this story continued for seven more sequels. There’s an energy here, and real passion you rarely see with low-budget horror films. No one involved phoned in a performance, and Elwes and Glover are in top-form, even if the former’s American accent does occasionally slip. The story, as silly as it may be at points, is never hard to follow, and every scene is shot with visual style and atmosphere. Say what you will about the sequels, but the original Saw is a certified classic.

Fear Itself: Episode 13 The Circle

The Circle shares a general premise with the Night Visions episode Hate Puppet: A man finds a book, with the same name as the episode, that predicts everything that's going to happen for the remainder of the story. Both these episodes shares a common problem: the book doesn't actually “predict” things, the book makes them happen. This is made explicit The Circle, and at least one scene in Hate Puppet shows the main character being physical moved by an outside force to make the book's predictions come true.

I don't know why horror anthology writers apparently believe that prophecies fulfilled by force are scary. If I say “you will have a bruise on your shoulder,” and then punch you in the shoulder, that's not scary. The fact that it's now an unknown supernatural force punching me in the shoulder doesn't change that. It would be far more frightening if the book predicted a series of events that played out on their own.

Beyond that, this episode suffers from far too many ideas. It feels like several scripts that were merged together, and don't really fit. It gets to the point where instead of being scared, I'm confused about which supernatural threat I'm supposed to be scared of.

The premise of the episode is that a witch (Victoria Pratt) uses hypnotized trick-or-treaters to deliver a hand-written book to a best-selling author named Brian (Johnathon Schaech), famous for his first novel under pen-name Robert Collins. The book is titled The Circle, and credited to Robert Collins.

Brian came to the cabin with his wife Lisa (Ashley Scott), who planned to ambush him with his editor (Eric Keenleyside), agent (Sarah Deakins), and publisher (Melanie Nicholls-King), so they could chew him out for his lack of progress on his next novel. Initially Brian assumes that the book is a joke by the others, while they assume he's showing them his new novel in an overly elaborate prank.

The novel predicts that a mysterious “Darkness” will attack the cabin. This takes the form of an oily substance, not unlike the The Damned Thing. This substance infects people by getting in their eyes, turning them into light-sensitive zombies called “Bloodthirsties,” which then attack the uninfected. Eventually, the darkness will eat them from the inside. How do we know all this? Because all of this is straight out of Brian's first book.

It's been said to never remind people of a better movie they could be watching. This episode gives us a brief outline of a better story that doesn't actually exist, because the description Brian gives, the Darkness laying siege to a small town in Maine, sounds far more interesting than the episode I found myself watching. It sounds like a fascinating premise for a Stephen King story. Or, I don't know, maybe an episode of Fear Itself? Just a thought.

Seriously, though, the Darkness being summoned by the book seems a little like watching Silence of the Lambs, only with Hannibal Lecter as Buffalo Bill's side-kick. Or better yet: Count Dracula as Buffalo Bill's side-kick. Two stories that clearly don't go together. Giving Brian an encyclopedic knowledge of the Darkness's abilities makes it even worse, since it steals any sense of mystery from the Darkness. There's never any uncertainty of what it can or cannot do.

I do give this episode one edge over Hate Puppet: the people are actually smart enough to glimpse at the end of the book. However, the ending given is vague enough to leave doubt about it's meaning, “And everything returned to the way it had been at 9:45 that Halloween night.” Why they can't read backwards by even a single sentence I don't know.

The eventual twist: The witch from the beginning of the episode is “Robbie Collins,” the actual author of Brian's book. She wrote it under the condition that Brian leave his wife for her, but he refused to follow through on his end of the deal. So, she wrote the book to kill them all. However, she apparently didn't bother to include an ending where she wins, because Lisa eventually kills her after she arrives at the cabin.

The ending just gets bizarre. Somehow a Bloodthirsty Brian is able to create the ending by writing in the book in his own blood, even though it was Robbie who created the book. After Brian and Robbie are both dead, Lisa examines the book and realizes that the last sentence has been written over and over again. Brian created a stable time-loop, locking himself and all of his friend, as well as Robbie, in a cycle of events for all eternity, in a failed effort to stop Robbie's magic. Yes, if this episode wasn't convoluted enough already, let's add time travel!

There really isn't a lot to recommend about this episode. It's many different stories thrown together. I don't even understand why the book Robbie sent is called “The Circle,” if the stable time loop was created by Brian. Did she intend for him to create the loop, trapping her with everyone else? Was she actually prepared to be killed over and over again for eternity for revenge on Brian? Furthermore, how did the characters read the last sentence without noticing that it was repeated over and over? I don't have the answers, and I don't think the writers do either. This episode was just trying way too hard.

And so, that concludes Fear Itself. Pretty underwhelming, huh? So, what's next? Well, now I intend to take a look at some of the horror franchises that have shaped our recent age. That, of course, could only start with...

Fear Itself: Episode 12 Echoes

Another lackluster episode with actors too good for the material. We have the events of the past playing out again in the form of what may or may not be the reincarnations of two people from the 1920s. We also get the mandatory discussions of whether or not reincarnation is real, and clues pointing both ways.

Stephan (Aaron Stanford), a grad student looking for a new home, rents an old house simply because he has a feeling that he belongs there. He begins to have visions of himself as a man named Maxwell (Eric Balfour) in the 1920s, and his abusive relationship with his girlfriend Zelda (Camille Guaty). Strangely, Zelda looks exactly like his friend Karen (also played by Guaty), and Maxwell's relationship with her seems to reflect his feelings as he wants to start a relationship with Karen, but is intimidated by her.

Stephan begins regression therapy with his psychiatrist (Gerard Plunkett), and we begin to see what a violent individual Maxwell is. He openly admits that he's an ex-boxer turned hit-man, and talks about his anger at Zelda, threatening to kill her. Stephan comes to believe that in the 1920s

Maxwell killed Zelda, and the scenario will repeat itself with Karen and himself.

Stephan begins having memory lapses, and Karen discovers that he had pictures and newspaper clippings of Maxwell and Zelda in a box of materials for his dissertation. Stephan, though, has no memory of them. While Stephan takes this as proof that the two were real, Karen sees it as proof he built his delusions around real people. The audience takes it as proof that the director thinks he's more clever than he is.

Honestly, Stephan's logic in this episode doesn't even make a great deal of sense to me. He seems to believe that Maxwell is maliciously trying to take over his body to kill Karen, but when we see Maxwell in control of Stephan's body Maxwell seems just as confused, and completely unaware of what century he's in. The entire scenario, if it is a case of reincarnation, doesn't seem to be any one person's fault as Stephan believes.

And, of course, it turns out Zelda kills Maxwell not the other way around. Echoing this, Karen kills Stephan when Maxwell's personality takes over. The only remotely unpredictable thing about it is the manner in which it happens. Maxwell, of all people, attempted to de-escalate the situation between himself and Zelda by yelling for her to get out, and Zelda stabs him for calling her a “slut.”

While this scenario does deserve credit for acknowledging that men can be victims of domestic abuse, the decision to portray Maxwell as the sympathetic one after his repeated death threats against Zelda just comes across as contrived. Zelda could be considered an abuser based on what we've seen, cheating on Maxwell openly and rubbing it in his face, but Maxwell is far from the innocent.

The memories of Zelda stabbing him cause Stephan to attack Karen, and she responds by stabbing him. The scenario is hardly the same. I was actually somewhat baffled by Karen mirroring Zelda by bragging to Stephan about the men she'd slept with while trying to hurt him. As far as I can tell Karen and Stephan were not even in a relationship until the final moments of the episode, so why the hell did he care? Maybe Karen was supposed to be possessed by Zelda, but if so that wasn't clear.

If you watch this episode, watch it for Eric Balfour. He does a great 1920s thug. That's really all I have to recommend about it.