A Reel Review: JIGSAW

In 2004, director James Wan had his killer cinematic debut with SAW, in which the notorious Jigsaw placed victims in deadly “games” designed to teach a morality lesson about the value of life. It was a well-needed refresh of originality that the horror genre had been needing. Six convoluted sequels later, and seven years after the supposed final chapter, we come the eighth film in the franchise, JIGSAW.

Ten years after the death of the Jigsaw Killer, a group of victims (Mandela Van Peebles, Laura Vandervoort, Brittany Allen, and Paul Braunstein) with shady pasts find themselves trapped in a deadly maze of horrific traps, designed to force them to confess their sins. As they fail their tests, their bodies are found and investigated by two detectives (Callum Keith Rennie and Cle Bennett), and two coroners (Matt Passmore and Hannah Emily Anderson), and the trail leads them to believe that Jigsaw may not be dead after all…

JIGSAW is a film with two distinct storylines. The first spends its time in the deadly maze, where the group of victims, handpicked because of their sins, make their way through the house of horrors. The second is a police procedural with cops and coroners on the trail of the bodies, with the mystery if Jigsaw really did die five movies ago the connecting thread between the two narratives.

Long-time fans of this franchise will be happy to know that this has all the trademark strengths of a SAW movie, with horrific traps, amputations, bloodshed, misdirection, and plenty of twists and turns. But it also comes with its traditional weakness in one-dimensional characters. As usual, the victims are scummy people who probably deserve their grisly fates, so who cares about them…and the cops/good guys are unlikeable grumps who also deserve a saw-blade to the neck. It’s no fun to be around anyone in this film. As for the famed traps, this time they are bigger (a giant meatgrinder), lazier (a silo filling up with grain and pointy objects), and downright stupid (laser beams). The realm of believability gets hacked up within the first 10 minutes.

Directed by the Spierig Brothers, JIGSAW builds its narrative around misdirection and guess-work. The film may be going one way before veering off to another, and while there are some good surprises, it all feels very basic and been-there-done-that. There are a lot of elements borrowed from previous entries, and the long-awaited big twist ending comes with a shrug. Pacing is brisk and the 92 minutes fly by, and for an R-rated film the gore is on the light side. For a horror movie there is zero atmosphere, no tension building, and is very bland.

Acting is ho-hum. Laura Vandervoort and Hannah Emily Anderson get the heaviest lifting and handle their parts very well, and Mandela Van Peebles (son of Mario) is also very good. Everyone else just grumbles and screams.

It’s no real secret that the Jigsaw Killer does indeed show up and is once again brilliantly played by Tobin Bell, with the mystery of how he’s still appearing the real draw of the film. The ultimate explanation, again, borrows too much from previous films, and there is a lot that could have been wrapped up a lot tighter. This is a needless chapter in an already tired series, which as a film is lazily constructed, and as a horror flick doesn’t offer one goddamn scary moment. And besides the filmmaking flaws, it adds nothing to the overall series. Dumb and pointless.

BOTTOM LINE: Fuck it