This review may contain spoilers.
Another day, another ‘Saw’ Film. And by this point, 5 installments in, I kind of figure that I know the score by now…But! this film did at least go some way to shaking things up a little bit! So thats a plus.
So; ‘Saw 5’ follows ‘Hoffman’ the guy revealed to be the 2nd protoge of ‘Jigsaw’, he survived the last movie; but it posthumously doing Jigsaws ‘Final Game’ by kidnapping 5 people who are all connected by having privilage and setting them a series of challenges centered around either working together to maximise their survival rates, or going it alone and seeing the carnage unfold.
While this goes on, FBI Agent Peter Strahm (who’s nearly killed by one of Hoffmans traps in the opening of the film) is running the B-plot, convinced that ‘Hoffman’ has some connection to Jigsaw thats beyond his professional means, he spends the movie defying his boss in order to try and find a connection between Hoffman and Jigsaw…with the revelations being far closer than he could have feared.
The problem I have with this one is pretty much the same issues that I’ve had with the previous films. This in many ways is very much the same tone, style and vibe of ‘Saws 3 & 4’ So rather than going through every aspect of the film and thoroughly exhausting the term ‘Its the same as ‘Saw 4′ buuuut…’ Im just gonna give a quick hitlist here:
Pros:
– The script here is actually quite a bit more solid than the last two films. This one, I feel could actually be viewed as a movie in its own right, It has good pacing, a solid tone, it develops its characters and didnt feel like an ‘extras’ package that had been salvaged into it’s own movie.
– The direction is a lot better than the previous entry, the style continues to develop and evolve which is nice and its really starting to shed that unplesent ‘washed out’ look that early 2000’s cinema was plagued with at the time
– The cine is much more subdued here and I am HERE for that. most of the overly aggressive fast cut editing is either gone or toned down, sequences ACTUALLY take their time to create a sense of tension rather than just being gnarley for the sake of it. theres plenty of B-roll on offer, this is probably my favourite of the series so far based purely on the visual elements….at minimum it’s tied with ‘Saw 2’
Cons:
– Every character in this film is deeply unlikeable and VERY stupid. I appreciate that some of the best films ever made have had unlikeable and stupid characters…But this isnt one of them, I wouldnt trust these guys to pour milk on my cornflakes without killing 3 people in the process.
-A lot of the traps have really simple solutions that were instantanious to my mind…but these guys literally do the stupidest possible answers every time, which is frustrating…My own personal hangup being the final test of one of the chambers, where our characters have to give 10 pints of blood in order to exit the room (5 pints each), they consider going back into the previous room which has a dead woman and a bath full of water in it…and they consider puttin the bath water in there. Which they’re told wont work because the trap has to be switched on by a human limb touching the ‘start’ switch inside the machine…THEY LITERALLY HAVE A DEAD BODY FULL OF BLOOD IN THE OTHER ROOM. USE THAT.
– They do that AWFUL goddamn thing AGAIN where they trapse back through all the ‘Saw’ movies up to this point and retroactively insert new characters and plot twists from slightly different angles to reveal a DEEPER meaning…They do that with Hoffman here, by indicating that he’s basically been around since before the first ‘Saw’ film and he’s had major involvement in every movie up to this point…we just havent seen him. Its lazy, horrendously misleading to the audience and makes me lose investment in these films FAST.
-One of the trappings of this film series is that because all the events from these films take place in a 6 month window in 2004. the styalisation has to maintain some level of consistency because of the aforementioned ‘trapsing back through the ‘saw’ movies’ thing. The problem is, that grungy ‘piss yellow’ aesthetic is ancient by this point in time. But they cant advance it much without making the matchup shots look really weird by comparason. Forcing the film to become trapped in a creative box of its own design.
The performances and scoring havent really changed much over the last 3 films…they’re not great. but they’re about passable, theres no real standout performances in this one either, which is a real shame. Im really not happy with the methodology of this film series honestly, the ‘Oh? theres a plot hole? ahh, we’ll fix it in the A-plot of the next movie by just…creating a character who was seemingly there all along but noone ever saw’ isnt creative influencing, its bad writing…Its bad writing with a ‘Save it now, fix it later’ approach.
With an ending that just about manages to not be terrible. ‘Saw 5’ is FAR from being a ‘good’ movie, but given whats come before it, I think this is probably my second favourite just behing Part 2.
I dont *think* you’d really need to have seen all the ‘Saw’ movies before this one to get it, honestly; you could probably jump to this one straight from ‘Part 2’…but if you were going to check out some of the ‘Saw’ films. This one would be in my Recs.
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