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

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/saw-vi/

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.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/saw-v/

This review may contain spoilers.

It’s rare these days that I have to spoiler tag my reviews, mainly because I try not to get *too* deep into the plot when I talk about why a film works or doesnt work, because I believe that part of the enjoyment of the art of film is the timing in which it reveals itself to the audience.

However; with ‘Saw 4’ I kind of HAVE to dive into spoilers because it forms a big basis as to why I dissapointed by it…

The plot? ‘Saw 4’ opens a short time after the events of ‘Saw 3’ and we find Jigsaw in the morgue being Autopsied. cue gratuitous gore sequence in which its revealed that in his closing moments, Jigsaw recorded a final tape, sealed it in wax and ate it. they find it in tact in his stomach. At which point (unbeknownst to the audience until the 3rd act which isnt clever non linear storytelling…it’s bollocks in its own right…) we then flash back in time to the beginning of ‘Saw 3’ and specifically the rib cage death as the cops find the corpse still fairly fresh (and rat infested)

The main drive of the film follows a cop named ‘Riggs’ as he is set a series of traps by Jigsaw. the mission is simple. Riggs is given 90 minutes to locate 2 of the cops who dissapeared in previous ‘Saw’ movies before their traps kill them. But he’s told not to intervene or attempt to rescue them, as they need to solve the puzzles by themselves. He’s then given a clue that will lead to their locations.

This sets Riggs on a journey across the city, where he’s put into several ‘tests’ with known felons and asked to basically either put them in one of Jigsaw’s traps, or to not help them and let them figure out how to escape, or die trying.

Riggs being a good cop generally tries to do everything in his power to save these people, while also following Jigsaws rules. garnering mixed results.

While this is going on, two detectives are on the hunt for Jigsaws secret hideout and bring his ex-wife in for questioning, which is basically just an excuse to give a massive ‘lore’ dump about ‘pre psycho’ Jigsaw and it’s the way the cops find Jigsaws hideout in the final act.

Speaking of which, the final act finds Riggs and the detective looking for Jigsaw breaking into Jigsaws hideout, at which point it reveals that we’re actually now synched up to the end of ‘Saw 3’ with the husband looking for his wife and the drama between Jigsaw and Amanda unfolding, but this time from different angles.

Riggs finds the cops with 1 second to spare, but in opening the door to where they’re held, it instantly triggers a trap that kills them both and in the chaos, Riggs kills another person, Jigsaws former lawyer, who’s been put in the room and told to overlook the cops for the full 90 minutes, at which point he can release everyone and they can all leave.

Riggs kills the lawyer in a panic and it’s revealed that theres actually a THIRD accomplice to Jigsaw, and its ONE OF THE COPS WHO WAS KIDNAPPED!?!

This rogue cop gets up, locks Riggs in the room while he bleeds out, traps the other detective who came to find riggs in a cold store with Jigsaw and Amandas corpses and then heads out. Fin.

NOW. While I will say that I appreciate that the script DOES have a more structured format here (it doesnt feel like ‘Saw 3’ which basically felt like someone wrapped all the deleted material they could get their hands on from ‘Saws 1 &2’ around a 40 minute movie that had been padded out to an hour. It brings with it significant problems of its own that did annoy me.

On the positives, at 93 minutes, this thing does have solid act structuring, the tones now pretty much perfected, the characters have a fair bit more depth than previous entries and I feel once again like this thing *does* have some entertaining moments dotted throughout the runtime.

However, I have to admit, I found AT LEAST the first hour of this thing deathly dull. It doesnt really pick up till the closing 10 minutes, The characters, while more complex and slightly better written just…dont have nearly enough charisma or personality draw to really win me over…and probably the thing I took the most issue with. Its a 90 minute film that seemingly exists to retroactively fix 1 plot hole.

Seemingly, this whole movie just exists to explain how some of the more manual labour roles in Jigsaws traps happened. 93 minutes of the audiences time, play by play going back through the last movie and for what? a few scenes of ‘pre jigsaw era jigsaw’ that, if anything; in my opinion lessens the impact of john Kramers character, all building to the reveal that this whole thing happened as the B-plot to ‘Saw 3’ and that now theres another guy (who has ZERO hints at even existing in the previous 2 movies) who’s running around killing people.

It felt to me like some kind of ‘Star wars special edition’ bullcrap where they go back into a pre-existing plot and digitally insert a new character with no previous references just appease some continuity errors the fans have drawn up. it was lame that the whole film just builds to that, and even lamer that the majority of the main plot seemingly is undercut just to make that the main point of reason.

Equally; I wasnt particularly happy with the way the writers have started to warp Jigsaws sense of morality in this. actual honest and good people die in this thing for almost no reason at all and what reasons are dredged up feel petty and weird. Did Johns lawyer really have to die? no not really…did the wife who was being abused by her husband have to put up with being impaled in order to teach her a lesson? I dont thinks so…

And its a real shame that the script is so dissapoint in my opinion because outside of the story its trying to tell, the film on the whole is actually pretty decent visually.

The direction is arguably some of the best seen in the series so far, with genuinely interesting styalizations, of note being the utterly fantastic transition edits they use in this film, such as a woman being thrown through a window in an apartment that seamlessly transitions into a door being opened into a police office. That was genuinely some of the most interesting editing i’ve seen in a contemporary horror film of this time, and they do a few little moments like that which are just wonderful.

Lighting camera and cast are all performing the best the can, theres a real synergy present here and I feel like this is a film where, on a technical level they really finally nailed everything they wanted to do with these kind of movies. While they still do lean a little *too* heavily on post production colour correction to help create a sense of styalization, at least the ‘piss’ filters been taken off for most of this film and instead we end up with some kind of combination of grimey toxic green and grimey blue. Though, in fairness to them, they are now once again beginning to try and styalise more with in camera visuals, which were greatly recieved.

The cine is sharp here, solid compositional choices, decently coloured, well blocked and impactful. Johns Autopsy scene at the beginning is gruesome, but the use of B-roll and solid editing really helps push it WELL past anything a lot of the film industry would dare approach for the time.

This is easily the best edited of the franchise so far, it breaths near perfectly, theres the amazing transition work dotted throughout, they minimise that weird rapid smash cut editing thing once again to just the traps (which I was very appreciative of) and the whole thing hangs together really well. Though, as an aside; I will say that the traps in this entry are quite underwhelming, a lot of them are ultra basic compared to whats come before it and most of them are over in a minute or two. I was always more of a fan of the longer drawn out traps that slowly get gruesome rather than the ‘you have 1 minute and then your legs are being ripped off’ type.

On the performance front, while I cant say there are any utterly astounding perfomances from the new cast members. Tobin Bell once again steals the show as John, hes a quiet but menacing actor and via the flashbacks we really do get that extra insight into his increasingly erratic mind and the things that push him over the edge. This film has is more subdued than others, but has some really solid moments with him. I still think at this point that ‘Saw 3’ has been his absolute peak. But then again I still have 6 or 7 more of these to go so…only time will tell.

The scoring is much more subdued as well here, and im SO glad they’re finally moving away from that awful metal/grungey rock stuff that ate up the first 2 or 3 movies. a traditional horror style scoring suits these movies SO much better in my opinion and here, while I cant say I was totally won over, the more subtle approach definitely went a good way to getting me there.

I’m conflicted about ‘Saw 4’ while technically this is probably the most impressive of the films to date, the script is deathly dull, undercuts its main plot for the sake of a fairly uninteresting plot twist and has less than interesting kills that really didnt do it for me. it’s very much ‘Nice video, shame about the song’ Audience members coming to this one without knowledge of the last 3 films will be utterly lost in the ‘in references’ and waves of random ‘lore’ it decides to drop in. It has similar problems to ‘Saw 3’ but does seem to at least FEEL like a real movie.

If you’ve seen the first 3 and find the canon and lore interesting, you’ll probably really get on with this purely for all the tea thats spilt about Jigsaw and his ex-wife, if your trying to watch this as an actual work of cinema, a coherent story driven film, and the lores a secondary to that. You’ll probably be bored out of your mind for a good chunk of the runtime.

Much like ‘Saw 3’ I cant see myself just sticking this on to watch independently. As part of a ‘Saw marathon’ it makes sense to exist. But its shallow and totally incoherent as a standalone work.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/saw-iv/

Something of a step back for me, ‘Saw 3’ seems to be the beginning of the series becoming messy and overly self referential. A film that seems to exist more to tie up plot points from the last 2 films and set up plot points for the next couple of films. As a standalone work and a film in its own right, its kind of loose and uneven right up until the final act. At which point theres a plot twist that feels a bit like a less engaging redo of the twist from ‘Saw 2’.

The plot here? The films opens IMMEDIATELY after the events of ‘Saw 2’ and ties that plotline up more or less, but then things kind of jump around for most of the runtime, going as far back as to before the events of Amanda’s first encounter with Jigsaw. And as far forward as the present day (2006) and a couple of months after the events of ‘Saw 2’ with Amanda kidnapping a doctor to help keep a critically ill Jigsaw alive by any means necessary. If she fails a collar shes been fitted with will explode removing her head from her body.

She has to keep Jigsaw alive for as long as it takes his *other* test subject to finish his challenge. This is a father of a son who was murdered in a car accident and has sworn vengence on the killer, the judge who sentenced him leniently and anyone else involved in the incident. The father goes face to face with these people who all have increasing involvement in the incident, where he has to decide whether to badly injure himself in order to save these people, or whether to let them die, get his vengence and get him to the end of the test.

If you’ve seen the first 2 ‘Saw’ films, you wont be surprised to learn there are PLENTY of twists and turns unexpected reveals and more.

And probably the closest description I can have for this thing is that it takes some of the elements that I loved in ‘Saw 2’ and marries them up to some elements I absolutely hated from ‘Saw’, then dumbs things down a little bit.

The script doesnt really hang properly for me, as I mentioned it feels more like this film only exists really to tie stuff off and set stuff up for future movies at the sacrifice of bothering to make the story it IS telling solid. The first act is really slow going, unevenly paced and has a constant ‘stop/start’ nature to it, the 2nd act speeds things up a little bit, but still really doesnt feel like a properly coherent movie. with only the 3rd act (which is largely set in the present) being a properly solid work…But even then the big plot twists just dont have the same punch that ‘Saw 2’ had.

They’ve still managed to maintain the right balance on tone that I feel ‘Saw 2’ managed to really nail. and its nice to see the characters get a bit more depth and complexity after the previous film left a lot of those questions on a base note only. This one clocks in at an hour and 43, and like the original, I think its padded, bloated and really should have been 15 to 20 minutes shorter.

The direction isnt great. styalization here seems largely left to the post production crew who’ve made the decision to tint this whole thing ‘piss yellow’ basically, there are a few odd scenes scattered across the runtime that do have a bit more personality in how they’ve been directed, but for the most part, this thing looks really quite flat and uninteresting and It feels a bit looser on the communication front between the cast and crew.

Cast direction isnt as solid as ‘Saw 2’ either for me, the core characters are established by this point, so they can kind of ‘autopilot’ it with mixed to positive results, but the supporting cast, particularly Jigsaws victims are all cookie cutter. they just scream ‘save me’ over and over again until they’re dead. A far cry from ‘Saw 2’ where our victims actually got to DO stuff beyond pleading to be spared… even if they were on the chopping block.

The cine is hideous in my opinion, and not intentionally. Large chunks of the film are super underlit meaning even in the darkest room, your watching a black screen with the occasional flicker of life behind it, composition isnt particularly pretty (I get that this is supposed to be a grimey nasty looking film, but you can present that nastiness in a way that makes me feel the crew gave a damn on set)

The colour grading choices are just plain ugly too, and adding to the woes, the edit, while tight for the *most* part, sees the return of those hideous quick cut edit sequences as the traps are playing out. But they do it WAY WAY more than the last film and it wore my patience out pretty quickly. Outside of that, its similar criticisms to what I had with ‘Saw’, the edits are alright, paced largely okay. But everything just feels *slightly* longer than it should have been, and some scenes really made me wonder what the point of showing me it was.

While im still quite delighted that the awful scoring from the first movie has yet to really make a reappearence. its once again been replaced with a total nothing of a score that was so great…I literally couldnt hum you a line of it. forgettable is better than bad. but it really doesnt do this thing any favours.

Honestly; if it wasnt for the fact that the 3rd act seems to *just about* stick the landing and that some of the scenes in this film were genuinely entertaining. It would probably be the worst entry to date. Its a bridge movie, it exists just to make future entries more solid. When it feels like you made your movie by just…emptying the vault of deleted scenes from ‘Saw’ 1 & 2, stitching it together with around an hour of new material before half heartedly shoving it out the door. You gotta ask, whats the point really?

Like I say; had it not been for the fact that just over a third of this movie is genuinely entertaining and fun, and that (broadly speaking) the majority of the film is to studio grade standard (it doesnt got above that). My rating would probably be half of what i’ve given it here.

But I cant in good faith recommend this one, and Im VERY unlikely to watch it on its own merit, if I watch it ever again. I think i’ll only ever watch this again if Im doing a marathon, because it makes sense as part of a marathon…but on its own?…nah.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/saw-iii/

Hot on the heels of the original, ‘Saw 2’…for me at least, represents an overall improvement for the franchise. It seems to have looked at what didnt quite work in ‘Saw’ while simultaineously looking to ‘up the ante’ in a fairly measured way.

The plot? Jigsaw is still at large and has this time kidnapped a group of people (including the teenage son of a cop) He’s dumped them in a houe, pumped the house full of a deadly nerve agent that will cause everyone inside to bleed uncontrollably until they die, if they dont find the antidote within 2 hours. The problem? The antidotes are all hidden behind traps that are tailored to each of the people who occupy the houses outside life. Complete the trap? get the antidote. dont? they die.

While this is going on, the cops find Jigsaws secret lair and begin trying to decode a live stream of the gang in the poison house in order to find their location. The father of the teenage son at this point, is taken to one side by Jigsaw who promises that, if he just listens to what Jigsaw has to say…then his son will be found safe and sound.

Of course…things arnt as straightforward as they appear and this all builds to a pressure cooker finale with twists turns and a final showstopper that’ll make your head spin…And…yeh…this thing largely fixes every issue I had with the original ‘Saw’ movie.

The script is much more evenly balanced, we have a clear 3 act structure thats evenly paced and transitions nicely between the acts without too much trouble. The ‘trap’ element and the ‘cops on the case’ element are much better intigrated here than in the original and weave seamlessly in and out of one another as the cops begin to learn exactly whats going on.

The tone is distinctly in the horror thriller subgenre this time around with just a dash of the psychological horror to boot! Which I thought was much more fitting for this type of film when compared to the last movie which was basically a snuff film married up to a cop thriller.

The characters are a bit underdeveloped when compared to the last film, we dont *really* get to know our main victims inside and out like the last movie. But the trade off for that is that we instead get to spend more time with them in the here and now. They tone down the ‘jumping around in time’ elements from the original, which means we dont necessarily see why our victims are here…but the film goes for a more subtle approach in trying to put across that they arnt exactly here by accident.

The film DOES build on the events of the first film, which I quite appreciated, it’s not as in your face as blatent easter eggs. but they tie these two films together really nicely to the point that they do feel like one big continued world.

And probably the biggest reason for the boos in quality, the film runs to *just* over 91 minutes…a good 15 or so minutes shorter than the last film, which allows it to really keep the energy up and deliver a much more concentrated effort than the slightly sleepy offering of the last entry.

The direction feels a lot more considered, we’ve traded ‘on set’ styalization for basically colour grading the whole film in piss yellow (which I was NOT a fan of.) but i’d say this film does have a much greater balncing act to work with when compared to the last film… having to manage 6 or 7 characters actions all at the same time while also keeping in mind the boundaries of the frame, blocking, the line and keeping the lighting, cine and continuity teams all in lock step…its no easy task.

Its a studio production, so it was almost guarenteed to at least meet the basics, but I feel this film does give up a little of its creative zeal, in order to firm up the character direction, dialogue deliveries and set management…which is a trade I think was ultimately worth it.

The cine seems to be much more coherent this time too. shots seem well composed, the films use of flashbacks is much more selective, but that means they feel much more significant than in the last movie, I have issues with the use of colour and post production colour grading here…it looks dull AND icky…but not in a good way.

We also seem to see the return of those weird, seizure inducing quick cut sequences when the traps are in action…Which im still not a fan of, but at least here the editors seemingly paced them out a little better, made them feel less irritating and a bit more considered on why they’re cutting the way they are. They also space those kind of edits out a bit more over the runtme, which I approve of because the longer gaps between that kind of weirdness actually kind of lets me appreciate them a bit more. I still dont think they work! but they work better here than they did previously.

The edit too feels altogether much stronger. We still do have some moments to slow down and take in the action, but the film keeps a solid marching pace throughout, never slows down to the point that it feels padded, seuences have decent room to breath with carefully selected cuts and creative use of B-roll. Especially in the third act where the editing really helps bring the plotline to life in a way that…in lesser hands it probably would have fallen over quite spectacularly.

Performance wise, Tobin Bell is delightful on screen as ‘Jigsaw’ John Kramer. he’s softly spoken and passively malicious. I could quite easily see comparisons to a ‘down market’ Hannibal lectre…But given this is really the first time we’ve had any actual involvement with the character I think Bell does a really good job of setting him up, establishing his rules, backstory and boundaries and im VERY intreagued to see where we go from here with the character.

Also a delight (and returning from the original Saw) we have Shawnee Smith as ‘Amanda’ who’s back playing Jigsaws games for a round 2, shes superb here really bringing TOTAL fear, confusion and carnage to proceedings in a quite spectacular way. she animates wonderfully and absolutely sells you on the terror shes feeling (the trap she has to complete in this set my teeth on edge…eesh)

The rest of the cast are fine enough…not particularly astounding, but theres no weak link, they’re all totally imersed in the situation, play it completley legitimately and deliver their lines with total conviction…I honestly cant really complain about any of them…

Apart from Donnie Whalberg as Eric Matthews (the teen sons cop dad) He doesnt really get much of a range to work with, he’s kind of an asshole, and while he IS set up as a main protagonist…he’s neither a hero or an antihero…I think had the script really given him more of a solid basing, I could have got on with the performance a bit more. Instead; his characters a bit of a vipers nest of half baked ideas and he swings through several TOTALLY contrasting character performance styles across the runtime ultimately not really winning me over.

Topping all this off, the soundtrack is a much MUCH more subdued offering this time, barring the end credits song; a lot of the PAINFUL early 2000s metal and heavy rock tracks have been pulled back and instead we have a more traditional horror scoring. Its not particularly notable. But fixing a bad score by replacing it with one that…isnt really memorable, but at least didnt have me wanting to watch the thing with ‘subtitles only’ is a step in the right direction in my book.

I was actually kind of surprised by how much I enjoyed ‘Saw 2’ it feels a lot more coherent as a production than the previous entry, and I was delighted to see (and slightly creeped out) that they managed to more or less fix every oddly specific issue that I had witht he previous film and then build on it a bit more.

I dont think this will be a film I revisit regularly, but it is one I definitely could see myself checking out again in future. and it’d be one where, much like the first film, if your okay with gore and dont mind a little bit of torture here and there. I think it’s worth checking out.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/saw-ii/

With ‘Shudder’ randomly deciding to drop 7 of the 10 ‘Saw’ films on their platform through November, I decided finally bite the bullet and see what this franchise was made of. Before this, i’d only ever seen the first two ‘Saw’ films, The first I watched about 6 months after it hit cinemas on a crappy ‘shot in the cinema’ bootleg I got from a friend, the 2nd I saw in 2007 from the same friend, in similarly crappy ‘bootleg-o-rama’ vision.

Revisiting the original ‘Saw’ nearly 20 years since the last time I saw it, I feel it still definitely holds up as a picture, but theres absolutely some parts of this that havent aged well, and parts that really hold it back from being the best it can be.

Essentially, this first entry is the blueprint for the modern day ‘Escape Room’ challenge. Throw a couple of people in a room, restrict their movement and give them clues that’ll slowly help them escape from the room (Or will it!?!) we meet Larry and Adam, to gents chained to the railings of an ancient looking bathroom, given till 6pm to escape the room, or they get trapped in there forever.

With some non linear storytelling we jump around in Larry and Adams lives in the days/weeks leading up to their abduction, and we’re also introduced to the detectives who are hunting for ‘Jigsaw’ the mysterious serial killer who kidnaps people who take life for granted (or place suffering on others) and sets them fiendishly deadly traps that, if they succeed, will let them go free, but heavily mutilated or mentally scarred…if they fail. They die.

The Script here is honestly a bit pretentious. Dont get me wrong, im a critic, I enjoy movies that try to act a bit ‘higher thought’ than the usual hack and slash fodder. But this thing really is full of itself. To the point that it really kind of trips itself up. there are moments where the characters are faced with an ‘impossible’ to solve situation, that most of the audience can solve within seconds with a bit of thought. The script drops WAY too many hints about whats REALLY going on, which meant that by the 30 minute mark (even on the first watch) i’d pretty much figured out everything barring the final FINAL twist (which admittedly, for the time was VERY unexpected…but suffers from the ‘Friday the 13th’ problem of…once you know the twist, the entire rest of the movie is somewhat defanged past a second viewing).

The pacing is slower than i’d like. The film could have EASILY been 15-20 minutes shorter and probably a whole star better for it, it basks way too hard in its own ambience for its own good. But it does keep a decent act structuring on side throughout, with nice transitions and a ‘slowboil’ chemestry between the characters, who’s rich backstories really help to flesh things out and keep the tension slowly boiling. it runs the three acts fine enough with nice subtle transitions between the acts and it sticks the landing to great effect. So on that front its a win from me.

While I will commend the way it maintains its wonderfully seedy and unpleasently dark tone throughout, there are a lot of loose threads that dont seem to go anywhere or mean anything and theres no contrast to that darkness to help create a more nuanced picture. This is just bleak viewing that gets bleaker as time goes on.

The direction is a highly styalised piece, that…for the most part, I really quite enjoyed. I thought they cast and crew worked very closely together to produce a solid work that really puts James Wans mark as a director on the film firmly. I will however criticise it for two things, Firstly, the frankly AWFUL and surreal timelapsed sped up styalised shots of people failing traps that are show via flashback. Some people may think they added a sense of urgency or creative flare to proceedings. I HATED them, I Found them irritating and so steeped in that edgy mid 2000’s style of horror film making. Its aged like sour milk.

The other is around the cast direction, not to knock the performances, which in themselves are overall pretty solid. But there are moments where the line deliveries just didnt quite ring true to the realism that this film is trying to put across, To me? some of the deliveries, particularly in the final act rang very hollow and I feel like, had there been just a bit more support given to the cast for those more raw moments, we really could have had something very special here.

The cine is a bit of a mixed bag, while I love the use of colour (acid green, electric blue and scarlet really seem to get a great workout in this thing) This film was one of the earlier victims of ‘Desaturate the crap out of it’ styalising that plagued 2000’s horror films. indeed, all the main scenes set in the bathroom are drab, lifeless and look super washed out and unappealing. there are several scenes where the cops are exploring locations that are brown, black and gray with very little in the way of colour to help add some contrast. While I WILL say this film is nowhere near as bad as some for the absence of colour. I feel it does miss out in places because of it.

The editing is reletively solid too, barring the timelapsy/quick cut sequences I mentioned above a lot of the scenes have a decent mix of b-roll, the line seems to have been in careful consideration, blocking has been followed for most shots and as a result we have an edit that has a more than solid breathing space, that keeps the film rolling…But is maybe a tad slower than I personally would have liked. As mentioned I think this thing could have been 15-20 minutes shorter and been a much more solid work for it. But thats not to say that whats here is necessarily bad. It’s just a bit looser than i’d like it.

Performance wise? Everyone seems to bring the best they can to the table. Larry and Adam as our leads are both complex characters who have a solid physical presence, which is especially impressive given they spend 99% of the runtime chained to pipes in a bathroom. the supporting cast are all professional, animate and deliver their lines soldily with a sense of realism. In fact; barring the aforementioned wobbles on delivery in the 3rd act, that I feel could have done with more director driven support. I dont really have much bad I can say about it at all.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the soundtrack I find myself with some issues. we have a VERY 2000’s score here, but to my ear, the worst excesses of 2000’s rock and metal. It reminds me of the ‘Freddy vs Jason’ soundtrack, which I equally disliked. Its oppressively loud to the point that I had to put subtitles on because at certain points in this film, the dialogue became inaudible. again…I just kind of found it more irritating than scene setting, and it pulled me out of the action at times.

All in all? ‘Saw’ as a movie is fine. While the cracks are beginning to show a bit because of its age and the time it was made in. And I feel the film as a work has a certain pomposity about it that I dont feel it earns (largely due to it being a film that tries to brand itself as SOOOO COMPLEX, while underdeveloping and even missing basic plot elements…and substituting nuance for heavy gore) It DOES have an engaging plot, it DOES have some solid performances and direction, MOST of the film looks decent and the editing, while a little slow boil in places. is fine. If you’re into movies like ‘Silence of the Lambs’ or some of the early proto slasher thrillers, it may be worth checking this one out.

I cant speak for later entries (I hear the cerebral element goes out the window as time goes on) but at least for this one? as long as your not squeamish to blood or gore, I’d say its maybe worth seeing at least once.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/saw/

I have neither the time, patience nor inclination to really get to the bowels (and believe me bowels are involved here) of the problems around ‘Ingagi’ a film that’s “behind the scenes” is WAY more interesting and engaging than the film itself.

Basically, the films a nasty racist PoS. That’s putting it lightly. What happened here was in 1929, some producers got the idea to make a fake documentary about a fictional explorer visiting a fictional tribe who worship the ‘Ingagi’ (Kinyarwanda for ‘Gorilla’). The film opens by stating that the current state of play is that once a year, the tribe offer the gorillas a woman in exchange for a peaceful 12 months. But that before this arrangement was made, women who were unable to have children were shunned into the jungles, where they offered fruit and themselves to the Gorillas in the hopes of becoming ‘fruitful’ themselves.

And…honestly? The film is basically an hour and 10 minutes of Stock footage, largely stolen from the 1915 film ‘Heart of Africa’ (Which…to my understanding was supposed to be a silent film introducing african cultures to a then unknowing American and European audience) with seriously racist undertones dropped in throughout via narration from our adventurer ‘Sir Hubert Winsford’ with (approximately) 12 minutes of new footage shot in some LA backlot in which Sir Hubert trots about doing very little other than having a presence in the movie.

The ending features highlights such as; A guy in a gorilla suit kidnapping a woman before being shot to death, Black women being described as ‘half human’ and questions being raised as to whether black womens children are ‘Half human and half ape.’

The utterly sick transformation of what was supposed to be informative stock footage and heavy racism aside, this film also features scenes of animal cruelty, hippos being gored and rhinos being chopped up in scenes not TOO dissimilar to ‘Cannibal Holocaust’.

But dont get *too* excited…because this isnt a sleazy, ill informed, exploitation picture that you can get your seedy kicks from. Its DULL. SO dull. Unforgivably dull. 90% of this film is literally just poor quality footage of savannahs and animals…its tedious, the racism is tedious, the gorings are tedious. Its like watching paint dry with a racist uncle.

The film *allegedly* inspired ‘King Kong’ though, to be honest. I dont really care much for that tidbit. it could have inspired ‘Citizen Kane’ and i’d still call it a vindictive PoS movie.

How bad is this film? When I can confidently say that this would make a brilliant B-picture to ‘Child Bride’ and ‘Child Bride’ would come away looking like the better movie!…You know your in for a bad time.

How bad is this film? On day one of its official rollout it was hit with protests from the mammalogist who dissaproved of the animal cruelty and members of the black community who were upset with the racism…to the point that the FTC stepped in and found the whole film to be a sham, eventually banning the film in 1933! How AWFUL did your movie have to be that the FTC would be like ‘No wait…these protest guys actually have a point…’

Ingagi is an important film, only in the sense that it inspired a much MUCH greater film, and as a relic that should be shown in schools to teach awareness of media literacy and just how awful times were back then. If anyone harks back to wanting things to be like they were…’A simpler time’…show them ‘Ingagi’ and get them to say that again with a straight face. God DAMN I hated this thing.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/ingagi/

Okay, so right off the bat I need to make it clear, While I understood the VERY broad elements of what was going on here; this film is SO badly handled and poorly executed that I honestly dont feel like I fully understood what was really going on. Honestly this thing felt like some sort of bizarre mash up of ‘The Warriors’, ‘The Matrix’ and ‘Escape from New York’ had all 3 films been slammed together and produced and directed by your local senior citizens lunch club.

The plot; as far as I can tell; is that at some point in the future sattellite warfare leads. to nuclear warfare which in turn leads to ecological breakdown and the collapse of society, the earth becomes uninhabitable, and so; humanity goes underground (literally) in order to survive.

While down there, over time…religious cults begin to pop up centered around anyone whos charismatic enough to draw a crowd. All of these groups are basically pumping the poor people for ‘donations’ in order to live cushy lifestyles. But the three main organisations have…basically an ordained crime syndicate ensuring their turfs are protected from the other cults influence and that the main three continue to steadily grow.

While there are grunts in this organisation, there are also ‘Shepherds’ basically highly trained assassins who do special missions on behalf of a particular cult that your regular goons arnt able to do.

Its here that we meet Dekota, a Shepherd who’s recently lost his wife and kid, who’s sent on a mission to assassinate a woman from another cult faction thats been causing trouble. However when Dekota gets out there, the woman turns out to have a son…and given that He’s recently lost his family, he cant bring himself to kill off another family, so he takes them hostage.

That’s pretty much the first 15 minutes of the film, and the rest of the movie from there on in, is basically just a long chase sequence occasionally broken up with sex scenes and shoot outs.

There is almost certainly more nuance to be had with this film. But i’ll be damned if I could find it, the broad plot is interesting but WAY too complex. I’d have been happier had it just been ‘it’s the future, 3 cults run the world and our hero has to try and escort a hostage while learning that all the cults are evil’

Instead the film makes out that there are dozens of cults (that we never see) and we spend WAY too long hanging around with characters who dont matter, talking about stuff that isnt relevent and using AWFUL dialogue thats way to flowery and takes a LOT of focus to figure out exactly whats being said.

The tones all over the place, this thing cant decide if it wants to be ‘Total Recall’ futuristic, or ‘Terminator’ futuristic and as such we flip flop between overly animated characters who feel really out of place, and genuinely unpleasent and grim scenarios that totally sour any of the comedy elements.

The pacing is all over the place, we spend WAY too much time stopping and starting with inane conversations that add NOTHING.

theres APPAULING CGI dotted throughout, that makes FMV clips look like 4k remastering.

Im led to believe this was produced by Roger Corman (one of 4 being produced near simultaineously around this time) and I sincerely believe that they basically booked out a warehouse, blew most of the budget on making a bladerunner-esq shanty town set with a few futuristic looking vehicals, and THEN (and only then) did they bother to consider what the script should be about.

Because this thing reads as a rough draft, its got WAY too much stuff going on that should have been on the cutting room floor, the ending is dissatisfying and theres no challenges or twists to this thing, it’s literally ‘They say they’re going to do a thing, they do the thing’. It feels like the cult elements have been too far seperated from the rest of the movie, meaning the whole thing feels like 2 films are going on at once, Dekota protecting the hostage from soldiers sent by the cult…and the whole ‘inner complexities and nuances of the three cults’

Because the two plots dont really interact till the end, and when they do interact it’s pretty meaningless. it means that it feels like neither side is ‘whole’ and neither side really satisfies.

Almost every aspect of this production falls down in my opinion. The script has the above issues, but the direction is rushed, lacks style or confidence, it feels incredibly generic and has a frantic feel to it that feels less coordinated and more just ‘desperately trying to get stuff in the can before we’re kicked off the set’

the cine is WAY too dark, to the point that large swathes of the film are almost unviewable, everythings drown in a turd coloured vasaline smeared smog that renders most of the movie unappealing and icky. and not in a planned way, in a mistranslation from script to screen kind of way.

The edit is poor with WAY too many cuts in a sequence and WAY too much B-roll crammed in there, it feels rushed, unpleasent and incoherent to the point that it makes the scripting even worse, because I could barely tell what was going on based on dialogue and plotting…but with an edit that makes it feel like a third of the film is missing, I have NO idea whats supposed to be happening.

The performances are all sub-par TV Movie quality, very poor deliveries from almost everyone involved (including Rowdy Roddy Piper, which was a real shame) They’re either too animated and incoherent, or not animated enough and feel like this was there first acting gig…well…ever.

The one redeeming thing this film has is it’s score, which does suit the tone of the film just about right. its a tad generic and synthy which makes it feel a little cheap. But it fits and they use it effectively. So small mercies.

Outside of the set work and score, this is a DIRE picture. One that I think, with some friends and a few beers could have the potential to be hilarious. But sober, on a Wednesday night, alone when writing notes for a youtube review. This things insufferable. Avoid.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-shepherd-1998/

Watched on Tuesday October 31, 2023.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/halloween-iii-season-of-the-witch/2/

Watched on Tuesday October 31, 2023.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/halloween-2018/1/