There was a time, between 2004 and 2010, when Halloween belonged to one man. A frail ageing cancer patient, hellbent on giving those who do not respect their lives a test of their true feelings. John Kramer, as played by Tobin Bell, was a far cry from the devilish evil of Freddy Kruger, the sexual threat of Candyman or Pinhead, nor the silent but deadly terror of Michael or Jason. In the form of John Kramer, the horror icon is a tragic figure, closer to Lear than leer.
His whole shtick, putting people in traps that push them to their physical limits in order to make them appreciate their lives, is an interesting take on the morality tale. His low menacing warnings, delivered via cassette tape or by video recording – using his avatar Billy the Puppet – allows for a sort of game show host aspect. He even has his own catchphrase – “live or die, make your choice”.
The morality aspect puts Kramer at odds with his horror film contemporaries. He has less in common with relentless criminals like peodophile Freddy Kruger or serial killer Chucky. Nor is he a traumatised child backed into a corner and cycle of violence like Jason or Michael. Instead he lives his life until a series of events lead him into the persona of Jigsaw.
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What Kramer is, is an expression of the same type of tragedy that Todd Phillips’ Joker attempted to express. That a true tragedy is a good person driven to something destructive by actions out of his control. What the Saw series did was to sidestep the inherent issues of a straight prequel that many other franchises of it’s deflation of stakes. Instead, what we get over the course of sequels Saw IV, V, VI, The Final Chapter and Jigsaw is a The Godfather Part II style dual timeline narrative.
In doing so what we see is the birth of the Jigsaw persona, how Kramer came to have this outlook, and what his legacy has become. Kramer’s descent from mild mannered engineer to cancer stricken serial killer might be the stuff of soap opera. His pregnant wife miscarries thanks to a drug abuser, causing him to shut the world out, abandon his desire to continue on, discover he has incurable brain cancer, attempt suicide, only to survive and decide that people don’t appreciate their lives. But it’s through the performance of Tobin Bell that we see what drives this man.
His wife, Jill Tuck, works in a clinic that helps addicts, it’s her caring nature that ultimately leads to her miscarrying the unborn Gideon. Each action slowly leads him into the persona. His first victim canonically, Cecil, is the one who was pushed into confronting Jill for drugs, his actions lead to the loss and so Kramer pursues him through a Chinese New Year celebration – on the year of the pig no less.
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Kramer’s belief that only through suffering at the brink of death do we come to accept that life is a gift. And that those who fail his tasks are missing a survival instinct (the jigsaw pieces of his namesake).
This is juxtaposed with the present day legacy of Kramer’s work by apprentice Mark Hoffman. Without Amanda Young around to provide an anchoring to his work, Hoffman’s continuing of Kramer’s legacy is much crueler. Punctuated by his early aping of Kramer’s work to murder without chance his sister’s ex-boyfriend killer.
Kramer states “killing is distasteful, to me”. This understanding that traps that can’t be won are inherently unfair and do not fit the ethos of Kramer. As shown previously when Amanda put detective Alison Kerry in a task that was designed not to be won.
Ultimately, the desire to inflict pain becomes the legacy of Kramer as opposed to his ethos of making people appreciate what they have. Even as far as Jigsaw, in which we discover that a game is being played in accordance with one years before, shows that Kramer can forgive genuine mistakes. Logan Nelson committed a genuine mistake is mislabeling of Kramer’s scans, and so does not warrant being punished by death.
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What sets Kramer apart from Hoffman, is that Kramer has a clearness of vision, he acts out of a philosophy. Hoffman on the other hand is no different than most serial killers. And while in a film like Saw VI the main trap has a personal connection to Kramer, the acts of Hoffman outside the main “game” are the same as any serial killer past a certain number – he’s a man mentally unravelling.
Perhaps because Kramer gives his victims every chance to get through the other side, or because Hoffman makes many traps impossible to win without God on your side, he suffers from a psychotic break. Hoffman was once a revered police detective, a pillar of the community. But like Kramer, events conspired against him, Hoffman’s form of Jigsaw justice is much starker.
That said, most, if not all of Kramer’s victims are people connected to him, especially those in excessively long traps. Kramer puts certain people into small petty traps – remove an eye, cut off a limb, but others he puts through a much longer more complex series of traps. Lawrence Gordon, his doctor, Eric Matthews and Daniel Rigg, detectives obsessed with him. Perhaps his most overt one is the game featuring William Easton (Peter Outerbridge), the insurance man who refused to fund an experimental cancer treatment for Kramer.
In this game, Kramer does not use tapes or Billy the Puppet, nor does he modulate his voice. Now dead, Kramer makes this game personal, and speaks directly to Easton. He doesn’t make it entirely about him, but about his firm’s treatment of people. Those he employs are put to the market testing of what warrants a life worth saving and what doesn’t. Moreover, Kramer eventually leaves Easton’s fate to a wife and son who lost a loved one to this unfair practice.
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While Hoffman is the main apprentice of Kramer, and the unofficial Jigsaw for most of the series, he is not the only one. Amanda, Dr Gordon, Jill and Logan all act as apprentices. Gordon helps with certain traps that require medical expertise having been “saved” by Kramer. With the exception of Jill, all his disciples are former players in his games.
Logan and Kramer teach one another the power of forgiveness and second chances, while Gordon becomes a true back-up, a last resort if Hoffman goes to far. Amanda is a representation of fanaticism, her belief leads her to violent outbursts at the sight of basic human nature, unable to realise she herself is in a third game.
That by the time we get to a fifth film people are aware of who Jigsaw is and what the games are about. As well as Jigsaw dealing with the legacy and fandom that would happen – and it would, people walk around with Charles Manson t-shirts, who is Kramer if not Manson with better personal hygiene?
The films pivot to explore what legacy is, Jigsaw in particular deals with what happens when people forget something. Jigsaw has been dead for ten years and yet when this starts happening again people are keen to downplay it out of fear.
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In exploring this, the Saw series ultimately explores what it means to make an impact. Kramer himself is fully aware that whatever intention he started with has been either misunderstood or muddied by his actions, his mantra and his desire to teach has turned into sadism by people who don’t share his ideology but his bloodlust.
Without seeing the latest film Spiral: From the Book of Saw, it can be assumed this concept is being looked at again, it’s in the title “from the book of Saw” a tangent, an interpretation of Kramer’s work, an offshoot. It was also director Darren Lynn Bousman who directs parts II, III, IV that began dealing with the legacy aspect of the series, so it lends credence to this belief that there are more who follow either the basic ideals of Kramer. Or even more excitingly, he’s back from the grave – however unlikely that might be.
A tragedy and a comedy in the classic sense, means that a story either ends with a death (tragedy) or a marriage (comedy). In this sense, watching not only the death of Kramer, which while somewhat tragic is inevitable, given his terminal illness, but what is more tragic is to see his life’s work become transformed into cruel punishments to people who might not warrant tests from which they cannot win. Yes, there are deaths aplenty, and of different kinds, but it’s the crumbling of an ethos that is the true tragedy of John Kramer, and the legacy of Jigsaw as both a franchise, and an ethos.
Game over.
