Jigsaw (2017)
Directed by Michael & Peter Spierig
Why? That was my original thought, but man I shouldn’t be surprised. Any time a horror movie gets the tag of “The Final” there is always a sequel. They claimed that Saw 3D was the final Saw movie, then I see the trailer for Jigsaw and roll my eyes. Makes me laugh that they just can’t let this series die, but what am I talking about, I still watch this shit.
Do you really need the plot? It is a Saw movie. Group of people wake up in a room with buckets on their heads and chains around their necks. The chains pull them towards a wall with a bunch of circular saws. The tape tells them they have to give some blood in order to be set free. Now the group has to survive the gauntlet of “games” from Jigsaw, while the police scramble to find what is going on. Nothing is new, this is the same stuff with every movie. No one cares about the plot, with Saw its about the traps and the surprise endings.
The acting is solid enough, no one is so bad that it stands out but no one is great either. Lets face it the best film in the series was the first one and they slowly got worse as they went on. The saw franchise does have good cinematography for the most part. Creative camera angles and quick cuts that help set the mood. The dialogue isn’t anything to write home about either. That’s such an odd saying when you truly think about it. Would anyone write home about good dialogue in a Saw movie? Anyway, the dialogue is competent enough to move the movie along without being distracting.
What are we here for? The traps obviously! I already explained the first one so we’ll move on to the second. Four people make it passed the circular saw bucket room into a barn. Once inside the barn the chains start pulling them towards large pulleys and if they confess they stop. Next the chains are hanging from the ceiling and three syringes in a holder drop down. Jigsaw tells them that one of them is a pickpocket and they once stole a woman’s purse which contained her inhaler causing her to die. The pickpocket was injected with poison. One syringe has the antidote, one has saline, and the other is acid which will cause excruciating pain. They complete this and use the number off one syringe as the combination to the door. The next trap involves wires wrapped around someone’s leg and two people in a silo filling with seed. The seed stops and then sharp objects fly into a silo. This made me laugh because who in the hell is throwing that shit in there? Jigsaw just sitting up at the top throwing knives and saw blades down? Pretty funny to think of. A lever that causes the wires to sever the leg allow the others to escape the silo. After that we have a trap of a big cylinder with rotating blades around the outside connected to the wheel of a motorcycle. They have to reach down and pull the brake to stop it or get shredded to pieces. The final trap involves the remaining survivors and a shotgun.
The traps weren’t anything too great to be honest. They all seemed like you could escape relatively easy. I mean couldn’t you put one of the chains into a saw blade and it would eventually cut through or break the saw? I don’t know but to me it seemed like the traps from the first three movies didn’t have an escape, they were pretty solid. Other parts like the flying sharp objects in the silo was just comical. The ending of course left the door open for a sequel. When is this going to end? Are they going to drag this out longer than Friday the 13th? It really seems that way. The traps are getting lame and the stories are getting played out. How many times can you have the same plot honestly? This wasn’t awful but I wouldn’t watch it again, and that’s how the Saw series is really. I would give Jigsaw a C+. It wasn’t the worst in the series but far from the best. With the Saw series just stick to the first three and you’re good.
