Go Ahead and Kill Her, as Long as We Don’t Care About Her

Part Three   (plot spoilers)

There is one woman character in horror films whose movie death I really cared about, even though I know I wasn’t supposed to; the movie was designed for me not to care because it’s the kind of movie where no audience member cares who dies.  They just care how.

Gotta be the Saw series, right?  It went from a taut, tense and ingenious first feature (with Cary Elwes’ memorably sawing off his foot—offscreen—for a rousing finish) to basic horror-porn comedy.  I don’t know anyone who watches the Saw movies for their tension or suspense.   We watch to see how people die—we just wanna see the Rube Goldberg death devices. 

Don’t get me wrong—I have a soft spot for these, just as I do for the Final Destination traps they keep springing on dumb teens.  These scripts are such retreads that by now they must be written in Mad-Libs format:  “Seven people escape death in a __________________ but die one by one anyway, killed by a__________________, a ___________________, a ______________________, two ___________________  (fill in the blanks with “girder,”  “falling car,” “vibrator,” “E-Z-Bake oven” etc.).  More complicated deaths than these are not easy to find, and, like Saw, these movies have a sly sense of misdirection (you thought he’d get killed by the falling wall safe, but the rabid mole got him!)

Saw sequels are retreads too, but they did an ingenious thing midway in the series, replacing Jigsaw, who has a sense of ironic justice and occasionally allows for escapes, with Amanda, who shows no irony and allows no escapes, but still has an Old Testament sense of justice—we’re ALL guilty, so we all die.  

Two classy actors (Tobin Bell and Shawnee Smith) ground out these nemesis scenarios for ordinary people with fatal failings (Smith’s a sharp comedienne, too—check out reruns of Becker), and the body count ran into the dozens. 

But what about the one death I cared about?  It happened in Saw 3, which also has the changing of the guard from Bell to Smith, and the death that got to me was the killing of Dr. Lynn Denlon (Persian actress Bahar Soomekh, also terrific in Crash two years earlier).   Her death at the finale absolutely wrenched me, and I cannot explain why.  I have inklings, though.

Part of it is Soomekh’s talent; she has been quoted as saying that playing the part was close to the knuckle for her and that, unlike other performers who find horror parts a lark, she got right into the character’s emotions and they thoroughly depressed her (read her insightful interview for her own explanation of the emotive process).  

Part of it was the “will they-won’t they” seesaw (yes, I’m aware of the pun) of the ending, where it looks like she is indeed going to escape—maybe—no—yes?—nope.  I haven’t been that tense (and not pleasurably either) since Kate Capshaw was raised and lowered over the lava pit in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and I knew those thugs were not going to kill her.  

Dr. Denlon was another matter, though. 

I think where Jigsaw really got to me was in choosing the crime for which she dies.  She is depressed.  That was all; her estrangement from her husband Jeff makes her dead inside, the life drained from her.   It took me back to Emily Dickenson: “you, who were Existence, yourself forgot to live.”  I think everyone in the audience cringed at that a little—some of us asked ourselves:  “Why are you sitting in this movie when you should be out DOING something?”   She is depressed, and her punishment is death. 

She is strapped into a collar of shotgun shells; her ex Jeff tries valiantly, but fails, to save her.  This really is a cheat, because he actually passes all his tests, but jealous Amanda kills her anyway.   And all the while, Dr. Denlon is surrounded by that damn collar, affirming her love for Jeff, and her renewed need for life.  This is not just whitewash to escape; we can tell she means it.  She’s been reborn—do you really kill someone just reborn?  

Well, yes, you do if you’re Amanda. 

Now why does that death, out of all the ones I’ve seen in Saw (did you see Saw?  I saw Saw) hit me where I live?

Well, I was depressed at the time I saw it.  Just went through a divorce, and I experienced it as the loss of a loved one.  I had failed (at least emotionally) to save someone who was counting on me to come through, and that is a truly deep-seated fear for some, as it was for Jeff. 

Well, hey, maybe Saw 3 wasn’t the best movie to see in my state of mind.  But I wasn’t the only one in the audience with that fear.  Divorced or not, depressed or not, it’s universal, and in that moment of finality, a movie that was supposed to be fun, horrific escapism went right to my heart, armed with a collar of shotgun shells. 

The horror was there in plenty, but the horror-porn comedy of such movies, seeing people you don’t know or care about meet their exotic deaths, was gone.  

If I ever get too dismissive of Saw and Final Destination movies, which remind us, as Freddy and Jason used to, that death is out there and it’s only a matter of time before he gets us, all I have to do is think of Dr. Denlon.   You nailed me, Doc, you really did.