Review: Jigsaw

POTENTIAL SPOILER WARNING

*

Despite some ambivalence towards the latter half of the series, I’d still consider myself a fan of the Saw Franchise, it struggled after Part 3 and the death of Jigsaw to stay relevant but there were some decent moments to push the series forward. As unsatisfying as Saw 3D was there seemed to be a definite ending so bringing it back 7 years later just stunk of a cash grab, but while that might be the case – especially with an ending twist that does not work as well as the film wants it to – I can’t honestly say I had much problems with it, call it being away from the franchise for so long but something about Jigsaw just worked for me.

Set ten years after John Kramer’s death – though oddly with no mention of his accomplice Hoffman – the city of ‘Unspecified’ suddenly has bodies start turning up, all baring the mark of the Jigsaw killer. With evidence ruling out a copy-cat killer, detectives Halloran and Hunt start their investigation into a dead man though Halloran has his suspicions about the forensic pathologists Logan and Eleanor.

No good reason is ever given for this but the fact that so much of the film is the result of that suspicion it’s a hell of a guess.

At the same time, five strangers wake up in a barn with chains around their necks that pull them towards a series of traps and tests they have to pass in order to atone for their own personal sins. After losing one guy early the survivors, Anna, Ryan, Mitch and Carly try to push themselves forward to get out of Jigsaw’s traps alive.

The cop storyline was a little better than previous films because it involves a lot of ‘He said/she said’ with nearly everyone pointing the finger of blame at someone else, not great but at least it mostly kept your options open. Mostly. The barn storyline was the kind of thing you watch a Saw movie for, perhaps a little too elaborate for my liking but watching people who deserve to die get brutally killed never loses its appeal even if it’s just good for a Saw film.

But then we get the twist and I’m not 100% on it, it’s not a bad twist – in truth it’s probably the only direction they could’ve taken – but they don’t even try to make it a twist, there’s too many big clues dropped way too early that you can figure out what’s going fairly easily. Worst still the amount of leaps in logic you have to make to tie everything together is a little too hard on your suspension of disbelief, like I said it’s probably the only wya they could’ve gone but they focussed too hard on working around the twist rather than making it an organic part of the story.

Acting is about what you expect for a Saw film, can’t say anyone was terrible but not exactly great either. Halloran was your typical asshole cop because god knows we need another one of them in this series. Logan had the makings of a decent hero but he was a little too passive and didn’t factor in too heavily until the final act, Eleanor had a little more going for her in that she was a self-proclaimed Jigaw Fan having rebuilt several of Kramer’s traps in her studio, but nothing ever came from her character which is a shame cause I think with a few tweaks she could’ve been an interesting addition to the series.

The victims in the barn were fairly mixed, Carly had a little sympathy going for her but she bites it before we could really get anything on her and Mitch was too bland to really even count as a character but I did kinda like what they did with Anna and Ryan. Anna is easily our lead heroine and does the most to try and get everyone out alive but she never reveals her own sin for why Jigsaw kidnapped her, it’s slight but I will admit there’s a decent unease about her, you want to sympathise but the film never lets you get that far and it’s intentionally so, it makes her reveal kick a little bit harder as a result.

Conversely Ryan comes into the film as the main asshole; selfish, inconsiderate and willing to kill to protect himself, but after a humbling experience with a wire-trap he becomes a more subdued character, he doesn’t turn himself fully around but I did have a little more sympathy for him by the end of the film than Anna.

And of course, Jigsaw himself makes an appearance, it’s minor but Tobin Bell has been a staple of this franchise for so long that seeing him effortlessly slip back into the shoes of John Kramer is always nice to watch.

This entry comes to us from the Spierig Brothers, a directing pair that knocked me out with their sci-fi brilliance Predestination but have yet to come close with anything else yet. On a superficial level this is lacking a lot of what made the original Saw films work, namely the fast-paced editing and good-old ultra-violence, this is much more focussed on the mystery aspect of Halloran, Logan and Eleanor trying to solve which one of them is acting as the Jigsaw killer which is an interesting angle to take and means that there’s a little more freshness to this entry than others in the franchise, it might turn off veteran fans but it’s nothing deal-breaking.

The atmosphere is lacking but that’s been the case for the majority of these movies, instead we here for the red stuff, and surprisingly there’s a real lack of it, this is probably the least bloody the series has been since the first film, and there was plenty of opportunities for them to pour it onscreen with some inventive though arguably too elaborate traps. Things kick off with a series of Saw-Blade Doors asking for a blood sacrifice, then things move to acid in a syringe, then wire-traps and falling farm equipment and eventually even a giant blender type creation that, while gruesome, shies away from any actual gore, I can appreciate the ‘Less is more’ approach but this is the Saw franchise, we’ve had rib-cages split apart, people crushed by walls, crushed by ice, split in half with pendulums, splits in half with acid, it’s a series noted for gore so the lack of it is noted.

That is until the ending involving Deadly Lasers that takes the mellowed tone of the film so far and introduces something that can only be described as a fucking Demogorgon of bad CGI and shitty excuses for violence.

When I finished Jigsaw I was a little kind to it, and even now putting everything out there and seeing the flaws I still want to be, there’s definitely more going for this one than other Saw sequels even if it gets nowhere near the original trilogy in terms of quality. There was just elements of this film I could appreciate, I liked the idea of the mystery though it couldn’t stick the landing and I liked the barn sequence even if it could’ve used some refinement. The acting was passable with Anna and Ryan giving us arguably the only interesting characters in the film and the Spierig brothers take a different approach to the franchise with mixed result, the mellow tone suited the mystery plot but the lacking of any proper gore made it feel neutered by Saw standards.

Cash grab or not I can see the intentions and they’re not as bad as I initially suspected.

5.5/10, close to a 6 but I can’t in all good conscience give it a full pass.