Design Exploration: The Official SAW site

With Halloween coming up, I thought I would find a Flash site related to horror:

The Official Saw site (http://www.officialsaw.com) is a site devoted to the extreme horror of the SAW movie franchise. The site opens up showing the name “SAW” filling up with “blood” as it loads the page. The intro to the site shows a video of grisly scenes from the movies to the home page. There you’ll see an industrial saw-like graphic where the center features updates for events relating to SAW; in this case a link to SAWMania coming up in November 2008 at Times Square in New York City and a link to the official SAW auction in Ebay.

On the right side of the “blade”, there are links to take you to each film of the 4-movie franchise. Each film features a synopsis of the movie, DVD features, video clips of each “trap” featured in that particular movie, a gallery of still shots from the movie, original soundtrack listing, and a link to the Official SAW store. On the left side, there are direct links to the Official SAW store, a fan site, and House of Jigsaw. As you navigate through the links, the same industrial creepy music plays. One of the links “House of Jigsaw” further explains the history of the killer. It also explains the traps and tells you who the victims are. There are also wallpaper downloads if you are interested in featuring these gruesome images on your desktop.

A separate House of Jigsaw site (http://www.houseofjigsaw.com) celebrates the dehumanizing graphic effects of the dangerous horror films. The main focus of this site and the sites linked throughout is to strongly assault the senses. What is it that the consumer likes about them, and what sick impulse forces them to continue to watch films that try to outdo one another with the brutality factor?

Upon opening the first page of the site, there is a grisly image of the Jigsaw Killer for which the words “Welcome to the House of Jigsaw” appears. The different types of fonts used to create this depict the sort of crazed demented look that is associated with the film. The audio that accompanies the page is grating and creepy. The quickness of the images flashing between each other is unnerving.

A preview of the upcoming film “Saw V” is shown. The growing appearance of a man who you eventually see has his head is in a clear, glass box surely traps the observer and forces them into the beginning of a puzzle whose only solution is unimaginable violence and brutality.

As you rollover the links to the other pages of the site, you’ll encounter sounds that seems as if they are coming from the depths of hell. As you click through each link, the same “tick, tock, and slide” sound effects stay with you. The slashed and grizzled looking words combined with the subtle and infrequent jerking of the words on screen add to the dark and dreary look of the site.

What I didn’t like was when you click “Enter”, the site takes you directly to the message boards; I guess I was hoping for something a little grisly. However, the design elements are distracting, conflicting, confusing; all to again assault your senses.