A Puzzle Without All The Pieces
Horror is a pretty niche genre in the world of movies, there is no real middle ground and you will either love you some horror or will do your best to avoid all horror films.
I am very much in the former of those two camps as I have been a fan of horror movies for as long as I can remember and not just of the more prolific and well known franchises. You see thats the beauty of the genre, horror films can be made by pretty much anyone with a vision and a video camera and you don't need to have a multi million dollar budget to get your movie made.
Now of course alot of the low budget output is complete schlock but that doesnt mean you should forego that particular sub genre entirely as you never know when you might come across a little gem that would otherwise have slipped under your radar.
Along side these small films of course are the big money horror franchise such as Childs Play, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween and so on. All of these began in the late 70's or early 80's and continue to churn out new entries every few years as new generations of horror fans emerge.
There are of course also new franchise that get launched and in recent years we have seen the likes of The Purge, Paranormal Activity and The Conjuring (which has spun off into the Annabelle films) all pull in big numbers at the box office. I will admit however that none of the three examples I have listed above are really high on my list of movies I happen to like within the world of horror and are for me fairly cookie cutter films that are instantly forgettable especially when compared to the older franchises which I can talk about the plots of in depth for each film in each series as they are ingrained into my horror loving psyche.
All of which brings us to the topic of this post which is of course Jigsaw which just so happens to be the 8th movie of the Saw franchise which would put it behind only the big hitters such as Elm Street, Halloween, Hellraiser and Friday the 13th I believe in terms of numbers. The thing is though that the Saw franchise has for me gone from one of the outstanding horror franchises to just another one of those instantly forgettable ones, the plot of which I could not tell you about as each film post Saw 3 has been nothing more than an overcomplicated mess.
The original Saw is 13 years old this year and still stands as one of my favourite horror films of all time. I have said it before that I am not great at seeing twist endings coming and I certainly did not see the surprise at the end of Saw coming at all, in fact I would still hold it up as one of the greatest movie endings of all time period and it still gives me chills when I watch it today.
Saw 2 is a worthy successor to the original and once again has a great (and clever) ending and whilst not as good as either of its predecessors I also enjoyed Saw 3. It was from there onwards however that the wheels started to fall off as John Kramer (Jigsaw) is killed at the end of 3 and so we then get a seemingly never ending parade of people who were working with John who then continue his work. The whole thing is made even more confusing by virtue of the fact that the good cop and the evil cop are played by actors who look very similar and so I will admit that I just found 4-7 confusing and very very dull.
The 7th film in the Saw franchise was released in 2010 and was entitled Saw 3D, do not ask me to recount the plot of that film to you as I couldn't if I tried as by this point I had stopped enjoying them and was hoping each film would be the last as trying to rehash Jigsaws crimes without Jigsaw was leading to more and more incoherent and implausible twists.
So they waited 7 years and now we have Jigsaw which we are told is set 10 years after the death of John Kramer in Saw 3. We find that there are 5 people trapped in a room with buckets on their heads and chains around their necks. The chains of course will pull them to their inevitable doom which in this particular trap is a wall of circular saws, as with all Jigsaw traps however they are told by way of a tape that there is a way to save themselves. One of the potential victims figures out how to stop the saws and promptly helps three of the other four save themselves too. Unfortunately the fifth person remains unconscious until right before he is sliced into many pieces.
Remember what I said about not seeing plot twists in films? Well here is an example of a twist that is so bloody obvious that even I saw coming from a mile off. You see we the viewer dont get to see the person being shredded as it happens off screen which was a huge red flag to me that of course that person was not actually dead but was the one who was behind the whole thing and yes it turned out that this was indeed the case so at this point I could have stopped watching the film as I knew that it was not going to offer anything new or challenging.
The other four folks of course work their way through the building they are in, slowly being killed in gory and really uninventive ways. Whilst all of this is going on we follow the obligatory damaged cop who is trying to stop the murders and who of course does not believe it to be the work of Jigsaw as of course John Kramer has been dead for a decade. He is also at logger heads with a coroner who provides evidence that John Kramer may still be alive. Oh and the coroners assistant is infatuated with Jigsaw and has a studio full of his old death traps.
So the cop thinks the assistant is behind the new killings whilst the coroner tries to convince the cops partner that it is actually the cop who is committing the crimes and dumping the bodies.
Back in the death house the final two survivors come face to face with the actual killer who is in fact John Kramer which at this point makes absolutely no bloody sense whatsoever, although they do clear this up by the end of the film. The cop, the corner and the assistant all end up at the death house where the cop and coroner both end up in a trap which you are left to assume was done by either John Kramer or the assistant, or both.
The coroner ends up dead and it looks like the cop is going to get away with his life until it turns out that DUN DUN DUN, the corner is not dead and it was him all along!!!! Not only that but he was the guy who we never saw die in the opening trap so yes I was right all along (sort of). You see the second twist here is that the deaths we have been watching happen during the film all actually took place before the events of the original Saw movie and the victims were John Kramers first ever victims. Turns out that the coroner had been the one who mixed up John Kramers medical records and condemned him to die of cancer (though that wasnt what got him in the end) and that was why he had been put in the original trap although John and seen the error of his ways and couldnt kill a man for an innocent mistake.
The coroner had then teamed up with Jigsaw and had been helping him all along which means that even in the original three films that I enjoy Jigsaw was not working alone.
This twist is fucking ridiculous for a number of reasons. Throughout the franchise we have seen Jigsaw teaming up with others to commit his crimes. For instance in Saw 2 we discover that the only person to ever escape a Jigsaw trap was in fact now helping him out (although Amanda does die in Saw 3). Then after Jigsaws death a police man continues his work seemingly alone only for us to find out later that he too has accomplices and eventually we find that the doctor from the first Saw film has also been helping Jigsaw after surviving the events of the first film. Jigsaw has to be the laziest serial killer of all time as he gets everyone else to do all the work for him. Now obviously later on this because of his failing health but still come on John you lazy SOB.
So across Saws 4-7 we uncover this array of helpers but at no point is it ever hinted at that there may be another person behind the scenes helping out despite the fact that we discover that the coroner was there the whole time. I would ask the question why did the coroner wait so long to continue Jigsaws work but the timeline of events across the 8 films is so all over the place that I am not even sure where the events of this new film sit in the chronological order of things. If you really want to try and work it all out then heres a good place to start -
http://www.digitalspy.com/…/saw-timeline-chronological-ord…/
So I guess if they want to continue the franchise they now can with the coroner setting the traps but what of the doctor and the other other helpers? Are they done or will they find out the coroner and join his team, or do they already know about him?
There are so many questions left by this film and I have no desire to have them answered as frankly this franchise needs to be left dead for now and then in a few years we can all bitch about the inevitable reboot.
As for a score for Jigsaw I can only give it a 4 out of 10. The plot is boring and predictable, the films offers nothing new and whilst it is not the worst film you will ever see I would highly recommend watching the original 3 films and just stopping there.
