Review: Saw V
As I’ve said in my previous reviews for the Saw films I consider myself a fan of the series, however with Part 4 and now this being disappointing entries I’m trying to wondering if the first three are good enough to keep me a fan. Well I’ve already given away my thoughts on this film but fuck it, let’s go on anyway.
The plot works, kinda. It’s a film of two halves and only one half is good. The bad half involves a completely unnecessary wrap-up of the other four films, and I really mean unnecessary because there wasn’t anything to wrap up, what the film does it makes plot threads for itself to tie off. Did I care that Strahm was obsessed with catching Hoffman, no, because they killed off Strahm in the last film, they just brought him back as plot convenience. Granted this side of the plot did give us flashbacks to how Hoffman started working for Jigsaw and I will admit I liked these parts but only because I liked Jigsaw and the few minutes we had of him were good.
The second half of this story, while again entirely unnecessary and pointless, did have some good parts to it and I wish there was more to it. It concerns five strangers, all selfish, all from well-off backgrounds, who are forced to work together to find a way out of Hoffman’s traps. This could’ve been done right, five strangers slowly realising they’re connected, instead they’re an entirely useless subplot where everything is found out within seconds, this should’ve been the main focus of the plot, it’s what the Saw series needs.
The acting is pretty much what you expect from the franchise, John is still the best character and he’s dead so that pretty much sets the tone. The police department continue to be utterly useless, the two main officers were pretty bad, Strahm - a side character from the last film - just jumps to conclusions about everything and takes that as fact and it really pissed me off. Hoffman - now the main bad guy - has nothing of note, I honestly can’t see this guy as the new villain because he leaves no impression on me.
The same can be said for the five strangers, none of them are really that interesting, maybe Charles the journalist who knew everything about everyone but then the film killed him off way, way too early. Out of them all you had Charles, the panicking dickhead, Meagan Good’s ass, the blonde who’s killed before we learn her name and Julie Benz, I guess she was quite interesting given her cold nature towards killing but there’s not a lot to her.
After three films with Darren Lynn Bousman, the series gets a new director in the form of David Hackl, this is David’s first film and you can tell he’s just aping the previous films but he doesn’t do it right. There is nothing of note here, not even the usual frantic camera and fancy editing which, to my memory, is only used once. The thing that pissed me off the most was how easily everything was discovered, especially by Strahm who figured out Hoffman killed a man just by looking at a hole in the window of an old crime scene, really? Come on.
Sticking with the plot and the disappointment of the direction, the biggest disservice is when the Saw theme starts playing. Now regardless of how I feel about the films, I fuckin love the Saw theme and it’s always used during a moment of clarity when the big twist is revealed. Here, it’s not a twist, it’s actually a major part of the film and I’m left thinking, that wasn’t used properly.
Another thing that pissed me off was the traps, despite being silly at times the traps always felt like they were real, like anyone could make them given them had the right know-how. Now I did like some of the ones here, the hand sacrifice was hard to watch and that’s saying a lot for this series but most of them were boring, the nail-bomb jars being the worst offenders. The problem was that a lot of them just seemed really over elaborate, the pendulum trap, while suitably gory, was silly to watch and then the closing room at the end of the film, fuck off, that was ridiculous.
Now you may think I hate this film, I don’t, it’s watchable and there isn’t really anything that horrible about it. It’s just unnecessary and adds nothing to the story. I can only recommend this film to fans of the series and even then I would say you could skip over this film and go straight to Part 6 and you wouldn’t miss a thing.
4/10