Cutting Up Saw...

Stephen Zeitchik of The Hollywood Reporter dissects the success that is the SAW franchise:

The amazing thing about the "Saw" franchise is not so much that it continues to have life five movies in -- other series have done that, especially in horror -- but just how amazingly reliable it has become.

With its $30.5 million opening weekend, "Saw V" is not simply the fourth straight movie in the series to open in respectable territory, dollar-wise: it's the fourth straight opening that's within a few percentage points of the others. (By contrast, another long-running horror franchise, "Friday the 13th," shot up by 30% and then down by that much between its second and fifth iterations.)

Unless Lionsgate is spending wildly on P&A to prop up its numbers -- and it hardly seems like that's the case -- that means the franchise has now become the studio holy grail: the (nearly) automatic success. Saw has the consistency of a highly rated television show, only in the more slipper realm of theatrical openings.

Affordable. High concept. Inexpensive marketing & distribution.

Pulp.

Edit to add: Note the clean, crisp and downright haunting image for the poster. Completely lets you know this is a sequel and that it's just as disturbing as before. Would that I could get some of my clients to understand that, "Simpler is always better." I will remember this image (and the Gran Torino image) far more easily and completely than I will a poster filled with half a dozen of heads...