Jigsaw (2017)

Directed by Michael Spierig [Other horror films: Undead (2003), Daybreakers (2009), Winchester (2018)] & Peter Spierig [Other horror films: Undead (2003), Daybreakers (2009), Winchester (2018)]

It’s a strange feeling watching an entirely new Saw movie, having no idea where it’s going or what the twist is beforehand. I last had this feeling watching Saw 3D in theaters, and while that film definitely has its problems, I thought that Jigsaw generally came out an okay film.

To be sure, being the first Saw movie in seven years, this does feel different than the previous films. Few previously-appearing characters are mentioned, the cast is almost entirely new, and the episodic feel of films IV through 3D is gone. John Kramer, by the point of this movie, has been dead ten years, and his games largely done shortly thereafter (once all of his accomplices got done bickering and butchering one another).

It’s a really odd feeling being thrown into another Saw film, but having almost no touchstones to previous events. To be clear, we do get a flashback with John Kramer – that shouldn’t really come as a surprise, and naturally, I was delighted by it. We also get even a little more backstory on John’s early days in his new vocation, which again, I sincerely enjoyed.

Still, almost all of the important characters here are new. We have two police detectives – Brad Halloran (Callum Keith Rennie) and Keith Hunt (Clé Bennett) – and two medical pathologists, Logan Nelson (Matt Passmore) and Eleanor Bonneville (Hannah Emily Anderson). It’s strange not having people like Hoffman, Rigg, and Perry slinking around, not to mention a complete absence of the FBI (which indeed makes sense, given how long it’s been since the last game).

The story is about what you’d expect. A group of five people – all with sins they must confess to – are dragged through traps in what appears to be a large barn. That location shift was fascinating, as we’re so used to these traps taking place in abandoned, industrial buildings. Here, at least the participants got some of that healthy country air.

Past a certain point, and even with a bit of wild guessing early on, one of the twists becomes almost a foregone conclusion. That’s not a bad thing, because I think the twist was done well, but I have to be honest and say that it’s the same type of twists we’ve seen a time or two before. Also, a lot of the suspense over who’s taking over John’s mantle – is it that suspicious Bonneville, who seems a Kramer fangirl, or Detective Halloran, who seems very quick to point the finger, or Nelson, who lost his wife some years back – seems almost too much, because really, as we don’t know these people, it could be any one of them (or any combination of them). When any answer is possible, the mystery almost feels like a joke.

Callum Keith Rennie (Case 39, eXistenZ) was a dick a lot of the time, but his performance was solid. Same can really be said for most of the main cast – I particularly liked Hannah Emily Anderson (Dark Nature, What Keeps You Alive, The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw), and Clé Bennett had a fresh feel to him. I feel like Matt Passmore’s character could have used a bit more depth, but it still worked.

Paul Braunstein (The Thing) could be amusing at times, so he was fun. Though Laura Vandervoort (Rabid) felt a little generic, she grew on me. I have to say, I did expect a little more from Mandela Van Peebles’ (Karma) character, but whateves.

The gore here did seem a bit downplayed. They were some painful-looking moments, such as someone’s leg gets severed from their body, or some spinning blades that didn’t look all that playful, along with falling knives and pitchforks and sawblades risking bodily injury, but honestly, the movie felt somewhat tame, which, when combined by how glossy and new-age it felt (Jigsaw had messages on computer chips and flat-screen TVs), it might turn some fans of the initial string of movies away.

Generally, I found it a decent time. I don’t think it matches with the best of the classics, but it was definitely a step up from Saw 3D, and if I’m being honest, that’s all I was looking for when I came into this one. I also feel, though, that a couple of story elements should have been cleared up a bit. Not a great film, but for a fan of the series, certainly serviceable.

7/10