Jigsaw is one of the most lazy, unnecessary sequels that I’ve seen in a while and that’s fucking saying something. There are going to be spoilers here because I don’t know how to discuss Saw without being specific about the plot. This series, up until now, has had an almost obsessive dedication to continuity. On one hand, I appreciate that because I can’t stand it when horror series simply ignore the events of previous entries, thus establishing multiple continuities (Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween are prime examples of such bullshit). On the other hand, that made the Saw movies increasingly convoluted. They practically required one to research the previous entries just to understand what the fuck was happening. Since the last entry (Saw: The Final Chapter or Saw 3D or whatever the fuck it’s called these days) came out seven years ago, I was skeptical of how a new entry could fit into such a complicated backstory. Or maybe they would just branch off into something new that doesn’t depend on the events of the previous films. Or maybe they would do neither and just make a piece of shit. Guess which fucking option they chose.
This movie tries to borrow a trick from Saw 2 by having two plotlines seem to happen at the same time and then reveal that one of the events took place in the past. We see some people trapped in a Jigsaw game (and we see that it is actually Jigsaw, aka John Kramer) while some cops and doctors (who apparently do police work now) are investigating. Here is the fucking problem: Jigsaw is dead. He died way back in Saw 3. We know that he’s fucking dead and, in case you don’t know that he’s fucking dead, the movie will keep telling you that he’s fucking dead. Therefore, we obviously know that that part of the plot is taking place in the past, so the plot twist is goddam useless. The movie constantly reiterates the one fact that makes its own plot twist a moot point. It’s as if the target audience for this film is people with amnesia that can’t go five seconds without forgetting that Jigsaw is fucking dead. Have I mentioned that Jigsaw is fucking dead?
That’s not all, though. The marketing for this movie seems to imply that Jigsaw’s mission has been taken up by some kind of cult of his followers. That is a bit cliché, but it would be a way to continue the series without trampling on prior continuity. One of the problems with the prior entries is that, because Jigsaw died in part 3 (he’s fucking dead, you know), the series had to be continued with revelations that he had disciples that had been helping him behind the scenes this whole time. But then the disciples kept dying, so there had to be other secret disciples working behind the other secret disciples. It got ridiculous, but it still all amazingly made sense. But surely, they couldn’t just shoehorn in another secret disciple that has been there the entire time? Hell yeah, they could and I’m officially done with this. The villain in this is another disciple of Jigsaw that was involved in the trap that we see in the past (it has to be in the past because I believe that Jigsaw is fucking dead) that must have been before the events of the first movie. So he must have been there for the entire series, but we’ve never heard of him before. What the fuck has this guy been doing for the last 14 years? Why did none of the other characters ever mention him? Did he want to finish med school before committing full-time to murdering people in convoluted traps? And what’s really sad is that there was a plot hole at the end of part 7 that could have fixed this (who is the other guy in a pig mask with Dr. Gordon?). Just identify this guy as the mystery guy at the end of the last movie and problem solved; the movies are now tied together in a somewhat logical way. There you go, screenwriters. I just tied your movies together and fixed a plot hole at the same time. You’re fucking welcome.
This is also the tamest of the Saw movies. None of the traps are memorable and they aren’t particularly gory either. Sure, the traps in the previous entries evolved into almost cartoonish levels of violence, but they were still entertaining. I’m struggling to even remember details of the traps now and I just saw the movie last night. Seeing a guy’s leg cut off by razor wire doesn’t cut it after we’ve seen people thrown into pits of hypodermic needles, have their ribs ripped open and nearly drowned by ground-up rotting pig carcasses. This is not the kind of series that calls more a more understated approach to the violence. It’s 2017 and now even fucking Saw movies aren’t gory. Fucking great.
I thought this series was over. I didn’t see any way to logically continue it and I was right. But just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in again. This is a shameless cash-in, a product of people desperately trying to continue something that was clearly over seven years ago. The lack of thought and effort that went into this is astounding, especially considering the meticulous nature of the rest of the series. I really hope that audiences show the same level of apathy that the filmmakers did because I will single handedly cause a whisky shortage if I have to sit through another one of these fucking things every Halloween for the next decade.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jigsaw_(2017_film)#/media/File:Jigsaw_2017_poster.jpg
