10 Movies You Constantly Have To Defend Hating

It's a common opinion that the Saw franchise is, by and large, very poor indeed. However, its first instalment is still something people point to as a modern classic and a masterwork of horror. Those people are, of course, entirely wrong.

The film is ineptly executed in almost every conceivable way, from its dreadful acting through its ugly cinematography right through to its choppy, off-putting editing.

Worst of all, however, is the film's framing of its central villain, Jigsaw. Throughout the franchise, there seems to be a desperate attempt from the writers to portray John Kramer as a tragic figure or even an anti-hero, testing people's will to live and pushing them to better themselves when faced with a dire situation. The fact that his traps are always theoretically survivable is a detail audiences point to when defending Jigsaw's actions. But when put under any amount of scrutiny whatsoever, this is all utterly hollow and disingenuous.

Many of Jigsaw's victims are largely blameless, being forced into these barely survivable traps for unforgivable sins such as drug addiction, self-harm or attempted suicide. He victimises and murders people who have been failed by the system in which they live, betraying an ugly ideology that if you can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you only have yourself to blame when you get your head turned inside out.