First We Saw Den, Then We Saw Saw

Is Saw a complete and utter rip-off of another film? Looks like it might just be.

Den was released, in so much as a film without a distributor is ever released, in 2001. It was a full three years later that Saw came along, sharing many of the same elements, including a very convincing series of plot similarities.

Panel2Panel have an interview with Den director Greg Arce, and a big long list of Den vs Saw comparisons. Here are the best few:

A madman has kidnapped strangers and locked them into an abandoned location. These victims are then subject to a number of weird mind games. One of them is a doctor - in the case of Den, a psychotherapist. The characters have hidden secrets that link them to one another, including a little something about infidelity. In the final scene, the victims are chained up so that they might not reach one another.

There are a number of visual coincidences too, with the central sets being dressed with pipes and chains. To me, it looks like the Saw boys have some explaining to do. Not to say that they won't be able to explain this all away, just that now they will have to.

Food for thought? I'd say so. And I'm not alone.

I'd love to see Den. I hope that I'd like it more than Saw, which - frankly - I really didn't like at all.

And, yes, a law suit is coming soon. The truth will out - whatever it is.