Jigsaw * (2017, Matt Passmore, Tobin Bell, Callum Keith Rennie, Hannah Emily Anderson, Clé Bennett) – Movie Review

Eleanor Bonneville: ‘It’s Jigsaw.’
Logan Nelson: ‘Jigsaw’s dead.’
Eleanor Bonneville: ‘Is he?’

The Spierig Brothers’ tediously gruesome and grisly reboot of the Saw franchise is as disgusting and revolting as it is stale and pointless. The sick and  shameful story has been told over and over again, and there is nothing new to say, and so this movie finds nothing new to offer, just more of the same old Saw. We’ve had a happy seven years, without Jigsaw, thank you very much. But, of course, the monster never dies, and he’s back!

Saw 3D: The Final Chapter (2010) was to be, er, The Final Chapter, and there was general rejoicing. But, money talks and the studio Lionsgate in 2016 gave the green light for the development of Saw: Legacy, now cannily named Jigsaw.

So, ten years after the events of Saw III (2006), which saw off Jigsaw, properly dead and buried, he seems to alive and hacking all over again – or is it a stand-in copycat killer? And people call me a hack.

As Tobin Bell is second billed as the late Jigsaw / John Kramer, it doesn’t take much puzzle solving to imagine that he is alive and hacking all over again. But exactly how can that be when he’s dead and buried? When corpses start turning up all around town, the politicians and the media want his coffin dug up to prove that he is actually dead.

Five people are now in active torment, among other things being pulled towards a death trap, in the new Saw ‘game’ – talk about disgusting! – under the vocal command of an unseen serial killer, who seems to be righting wrongs, or perhaps is seeking revenge, maybe both. Meanwhile a creepy policeman, Detective Halloran (Callum Keith Rennie), is sniffing around and a couple of creepy pathologists, Logan Nelson (Matt Passmore) and Eleanor Bonneville (Hannah Emily Anderson), are on the case – or are they? They all seem way too involved in the case, certainly up to something. It is that kind of thriller.

You’ll notice I’m hanging to to the thriller aspects of the movie, because the horror ones are so repulsive. These of course are the reason the audience will be coming. And it does deliver on the evil horror front with its sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture. There’s quite a bit of strong language too, as the writers let their characters drift into the repetitive ‘oh F’, and ‘oh F’ again type of dialogue, as inspiration starts to elude them. Well, I suppose it’s an ‘oh F’ sort of situation. What would you say? There’s nothing more to say when a saw or wire is hacking off some part of your body.

It is an enormous relief to get to the morgue scenes and away from the torture porn scenes, so the movie plays like a serial killer mystery thriller instead of just torture porn. Say what you like about torture porn, it is debased and degrading. Jigsaw comes from a production company called Twisted Pictures, so no one is any doubt about what they are getting.

The Spierig Brothers Michael and Peter turn in a slick, smart-enough horror movie, while Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg write a reasonable screenplay, with okay plotting and dialogue. The acting is adequate from a bunch of actors I started to feel very sorry for as they go through their grisly paces. You can’t really complain about the craftsmanship, I suppose. It’s just I want Saw/ Jigsaw to go away, and stay away now. Die, monster, die!

On appeal in Australia, the rating of R18+ for high impact horror violence was reduced to MA15+ for strong themes and strong horror violence. This has just got to be wrong. It is definitely R18+ for high impact horror violence. It’s got a UK 18 and a US R rating.

It was shot in Toronto in 2016. I thought Canadians had good taste and were the good guys.

Jigsaw dominated the US box office on the 2017 pre-Halloween weekend with a gross of about $20 million. It had a budget of only about $10 million.  On its opening night on 26 October, men outweighed women by 58 per cent to 42 per cent. Did they like it? Yes a lot of them did. 37 per cent of folks said the film was ‘excellent’ and another 32 per cent said it was ‘very good’.

The Saw franchise started back in 2004, directed by James Wan in his feature film debut, with worldwide grosses hitting $100 million on a $1.2 million budget. Then Lionsgate opened a new Saw movie annually for straight six years.

Saw V appeared in 2008.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

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