there’s a lot going on in the video, but here are the highlights I picked out:

• unlike how film critics generally view the films, she claims the Saw movies are not “torture porn” in the sense that people sadistically enjoy watching the torture & violence, instead Saw films actively make people (even fans) uncomfortable - these are hard movies to watch, and people are not “getting off” on the violence in them
• the villain (Jigsaw) rationalizes his killings as a form of rehabilitative punishment for sins, crimes, etc. and this comes from the fact the creator was attempting to re-create Seven, in which a religious serial killer targets people for their sins (see “mission-based” serial killers)
• she contrasts the Saw films with Home Alone and then Tarantino’s films to show how revenge plots are just as (or more) sadistic as “torture porn” films, and how revenge plots show torture and violence that the audience enjoys and does not feel cognitive dissonance about because it is morally justified within the film’s plot (e.g. the whipping of a slave master in Django Unchained) - unlike the violence in Saw which makes the audience squirm and uncomfortable and in which the violence is portrayed as gritty and not justified
• in most of the Saw films, Jigsaw is not a hero and he is shown to be inconsistent in his reasoning, and because he’s a genuine villain, the Saw films are a critique of the sadistic violence that people morally rationalize or justify as forms of “justice” - and she points to how A Clockwork Orange does the same
• she presents a kind of arc of how grievances and injustices are handled, starting with an implied state of nature in which feuds develop and retributive violence gets out of hand and results in endless retaliation; so a legal system to handle disputes emerges to prevent feuds from developing (e.g. rules like “eye for an eye”), and eventually this culminates in the State taking over handling matters of justice and violence, mediating issues through courts and laws; eventually liberalism even develops the idea that instead of just torturing or punishing criminals who have violated laws, instead the goal should be “rehabilitation” - which promises no longer engaging in the uncomfortable torture that a justice system like this demands; unfortunately “rehabilitation” often takes sadistic forms anyway
• she connects the role entertainment plays in the way justice systems dole out violence as punishment, e.g. the way hangings were made into a public spectacle
• she refers to George Lakoff’s book Moral Politics in which he claims liberals and conservatives have two different worldviews, which are divided into “strict father” families and “nurturant parent” families. ContraPoints renames these to “daddy” politics vs “mommy” politics; daddy politics is embodied by the Saw villain Jigsaw: he demands obedience to his authority, he emphasizes the importance of rigid self-discipline and sees punishment and sacrifice as essential to developing moral character, and he ignores structural causes of behavior preferring instead to victim-blame and put full responsibility on individuals (e.g. choosing to kill a blue-collar man because he “chose” to continue smoking cigarettes even after being diagnosed with a health condition - this crime deserved being in a torture trap just as much as the crimes of a healthcare CEO killing people by prioritizing profit).
• in comparison is “mommy” politics, which is basically woke lib stuff like being supportive and understanding, promoting cooperation, giving people who have had bad luck second chances, etc. and in the Saw films mommy politics is embodied by Jigsaw’s wife, who ran an addiction clinic to help people recover; she was robbed by an addict resulting in the termination of her pregnancy, which then motivated Jigsaw to start torturing people (and it was clearly personal, as he incorporated quotes from her rehab clinic brochures into his traps).

So, Jigsaw presents his traps as justified punishment that is intended to fit within the framework of liberal rehabilitation of criminals, but the films seem to make clear that we shouldn’t take Jigsaw seriously, so in the end Saw is a critique of the sadism of a justice system that claims to be humane and ethical, but which in the end is engaging in rationalizing violence that is often just an excuse to indulge in the urge to engage in sadistic pleasure.

She doesn’t really deny that sadistic pleasure is inherently wrong, nor does she deny that all justice seeking or revenge is wrong - examples she gave includes Luigi’s killing of the healthcare CEO, or the killing of a rapist by the father of the victim on live TV - these are celebrated examples of vigilantism in a situation where people do not feel that the violence of the justice system is enough punishment given the perceived crimes committed by the victims of that vigilante violence.

To be honest, I was a bit disappointed she didn’t mention Watchmen, which centers this exact struggle between wanting accountability for how justice is administered (i.e. we want courts to weigh evidence and dole out reasonable punishment much more than we want a single person like Batman deciding who is a criminal and what they deserve - superhero vigilantism leads to a Judge Dredd situation where there is no democratic process of accountability to determine the process of justice or to restrain the violence from targeting innocent people).

Anyway - hopefully this helps; there’s more to the video, ContraPoints actually does touch more on vigilantism and superheroes (mentioning Batman and Spiderman).

I also didn’t really mention the way she contrasts Saw films as “low brow” torture porn (rated poorly by critics and seen as having no redeeming value as art) with “elevated” horror films like Witch, Babadook, Hereditary, etc. - so in a way her whole thesis is that actually Saw not only has value as art, but specifically it does a better job of challenging our social acceptance of “justified violence” as a kind of rationalized sadistic pleasure.

I also didn’t mention the way she analyzes the torture scene in Reservoir Dogs as a contrasting example against Tarantino’s other films which are more revenge oriented and thus more “guilt free” in the enjoyment of violence - instead, Reservoir Dogs simultaneously puts the audience in a position of enjoying the sadism of the torture while also exposing the wrongness of the clearly needless and awful violence, putting the audience in a position of cognitive dissonance and discomfort (making it more like the Saw films).

Hopefully that’s enough recap, but that’s what I got out of it anyway - let me know if I missed anything crucial 😅