Continuing on directly from ‘Saw 5’, ‘Saw 6’ Is *SO* close to hitting the heady highs that ‘Saw 2’ offered…it’s frankly Tantilizingly close. But it *just* cant quite hit that mark.
The plot? Hoffmans past is starting to catch up with him as the police are hot the trail for leads on Jigsaw, and come to the conclusion that multiple killers may in fact be involved.
While trying to shake them off, he sets in motion Johns REAL final test, putting a life insurance salesman through a 60 minute gauntlet of trials with life or death consiquences.
Jill Tuck appears back on the scene again, now armed with a mysterious box that was given to her as part of Johns last will and testimony. Whats in the box? you’ll have to check the film to see.
And honestly, theres not a whole lot here to say. We basically just have marginal refinements to ‘Saw 5’ The script feels like a natural sequel to ‘Saw 5’ with very little (if any) retroactive revisions. It feels like they had a game plan with this one and saw it through to completion. And that really does show with this one.
The plot feels like a natural sequel, the pacings fantastic its a zippy 90 minutes long, has a great tone once again and a lot of the cons I had in the previous film have either been fixed or at the very least reduced. My biggest issues in the last film were stupid and unlikeable characters, weak trap designs and an over-reliance on retroactive revisions to the narrative.
Here? the characters are still a little dumb and assholeish. But they at least TRY to make them have redeemable qualities for the most part, they TRY to give them a bit more depth beyond ‘they’re a bad person and they’re stupid’. The traps are more intricate and have a lot more weight in gains and losses. And all the ‘revisionist’ stuff in this one are to events that pretty much happened WELL before the Jigsaw killings even began. it just adds an extra layer to John Kramers ‘Falling down’ narrative of becoming a killer. With the only bit of revision that DID call back to earlier ‘Saw’ films being a light passing reference from ‘Saw 3’ that was kind of inconsiquetial, and a callback to ‘Saw 5’ more as a reminder than an act of revisionism.
Because they’re working out of the boundaries and shadows of the older films, this one felt a lot nicer honestly, the direction and cine felt somewhat refreshed, it’s nice to have colour in these movies that isnt ‘urine yellow’ or ‘cool blue’ While the editing and cine have cooled down a bit from ‘Saw 4 & 5’s ‘ experiements in editing and composition, this is a pretty decent looking movie.
The performances are a little cringey in places, but its mainly the supporting cast at fault, with our core cast giving a reletively solid performance all things considered.
Theres really not much more to say, I enjoyed ‘Saw 5’ but it had faults, this film took the momentum built up in 5 and tried to correct the faults.
The only thing it loses a little on is the weaker elements of the supporting cast, the ending (after all the chaos this film has) is a little underwhelming, The deaths are now starting to become a little bit aimless and needlessly cruel (Here are two innocent people, one has a family and diabetes, the other has noone but is healthy and young. You need to kill one of them)…I suppose an arguement could be made that these are now warped interpretations of Johns plans. But the message is now kind of shifting from ‘we dont murder people’ to ‘We dont murder people, but if innocent people get killed during our ‘traps’ then it’s considered necessary collateral…which seems to fly in the face of the original message of these films. Oh! and theres a couple of stereotypical horror tropes that get leaned on a little heavy here for my taste.
But all in all? this is probably the best ‘Saw’ film i’ve seen since ‘Saw 2’ I cant recommend it because you pretty much need to watch ‘Saws’ 1-5 to get an idea of what the hell is going on in this one. But if you got a little dissilusioned with the franchise after parts 3 and 4, it may be worth checking out 5 and 6 honestly. I wont say they’re amazing cinematic masterpieces. But they’re intersting and engaging in a ‘Made for TV Movie’ kind of way
TYTD Reviews 