The Saw Reviews - Page 2
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SAW IV (2007)
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SAW IV (2007)
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The Premise: Tormented by his inability to save his colleagues from Jigsaw's traps, SWAT Commander Daniel Rigg is given ninety minutes to overcome a series of trials designed to test his mettle.
The Verdict: Even though the Saw series is never particularly realistic, this is the point at which it breaks suspension of disbelief for me. There are simply too many characters and moving parts for it to be plausible, especially given the central conceit that all of it is supposed to take place in ninety minutes with multiple characters traveling across town multiple times. The dialogue is also at a new low, and the victim--Rigg--is being punished for the thinnest of reasons, namely that he is too anxious to risk his life and happiness to save other people. There's a lot more gore thrown in, usually unnecessarily as with the completely superfluous autopsy scene, and this is probably where it crosses the line into "torture porn" for most audiences. On top of all that, there are a bunch of flashy scene transitions that are more distracting than effective. However, the final act does a good job stitching things together (though it might be a bit too convoluted for casual audiences), the timeline twist is clever, the flashbacks exploring John Kramer's character and Jigsaw's origins are amazingly well-done, and the series continues to adhere to its complex continuity with style.
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SAW V (2008)
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SAW V (2008)
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The Premise: FBI Agent Peter Strahm is determined to prove he knows the identity of Jigsaw's remaining accomplice, while another group of victims is tested.
The Verdict: The fifth movie feels like a direct continuation of the fourth--watched back-to-back, they almost feel like one movie--but with the villain fully unmasked and the victims thrown in more as an afterthought than anything else, there's no real puzzle to hold the audience's attention for another ninety minutes of complicated mythology, shoddy police work, and torture. The puzzle half of the story feels like a throwback to the eminently more successful Saw II, but the characters aren't as developed and the traps aren't as memorable. Saw V shines most in its flashback sequences, which tie up almost every dangling plot thread. Unfortunately, most of the movie feels like it's just going through the motions and following the formula, not trying to do anything new. Besides, Hoffman isn't even remotely as interesting a character as John Kramer.
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SAW VI (2009)
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SAW VI (2009)
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The Premise: Detective Lieutenant Mark Hoffman, the standard-bearer for Jigsaw's legacy, must race to cover his tracks as a new victim is forced to decide who lives and who dies in Jigsaw's most diabolical traps to date.
The Verdict: Saw VI is better than Saw V, but it still feels too rote. I appreciate the attempt to be provocative with more political overtones (and Jigsaw delivers a fantastic line about insurance companies we can all get behind), but it doesn't even try to explore the moral grey areas of the main character, Easton. This is especially notable as the puzzles violate Jigsaw's self-imposed rules, ensuring that, no matter how the game is played, people will die. In other Saw films, unwinnable traps are explained as products of Jigsaw's undisciplined apprentices, but this movie makes it abundantly clear that John himself designed these traps, which finally and irreparably breaks the series' continuity. Besides, the central argument Jigsaw is trying to make is incoherent and self-defeating: namely, that his formula for determining who lives and who dies is superior to Easton's formula for the same, all because Easton didn't want to fund Jigsaw's probably pseudoscientific experimental cancer treatment. The third act twists aren't very good, either, with some of them feeling deliberately obtuse for the sake of throwing off the audience (the "family" twist, for example). I also don't buy John's wife being complicit with John's post-mortem plans; she is a far more believable character before she turns to the dark side. Still, Hoffman escaping the reverse beartrap in the end is pretty cool.
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SAW: THE FINAL CHAPTER (2010)
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SAW: THE FINAL CHAPTER (2010)
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The Premise: The power struggle between Hoffman and Jigsaw's ex-wife, Jill Tuck, comes to a head as yet another victim, a fake survivor who has been profiting on Jigsaw's legacy, is tested.
The Verdict: While the primary victim of this entry, Bobby Dagen, is potentially interesting and the traps he must deal with are sufficiently disturbing and imaginative, everything else is a new low for the series. The acting and dialogue are terrible (especially everything to deal with the character of Gibson), and the music is painfully repetitive. The effects budget has also taken a noticeable hit, which isn't helped by the occasional, jarring 3-D gimmick. Things build to an embarrasing climax in which the current villain, Hoffman, goes full Terminator on a police station before the plot transitions into a now-familiar twist montage to shoehorn in the long-missing Dr. Gordon for what amounts to an extended--and wasted--cameo. At this point, everything intelligent, provocative, and creative about the series has been stripped away, leaving behind a bloody skeleton of raw, base spectacle. It's not completely awful--fans entertained by the torture porn should find it satisfactory--but it's the weakest entry thus far.
When the series first ended in 2010, it felt deserved. The series had exhausted its potential, and its box office numbers were dropping. The last few movies were disappointing echoes of previous success, and The Final Chapter was an obvious rush job to cap it all off and be done with it. It was a good seven year run, but now, another seven years later, the series is poised for a comeback. A lot hinges on the success of this weekend's Jigsaw. I don't know whether it can offer anything fresh with which to bring the titular antihero into a new decade, but I'll let my hopes remain high. [See the review here!]
-e. magill 10/26/2017
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