TYTD Reviews

So…Its taken 10 of these, but I think i’ve finally cracked what I like, and dont like, about the ‘Saw’ franchise. I like relatively self contained stories that dont end up bleeding heavily into 3 or 4 other films in such a way that you get an incomplete experience if you dont watch the lot. I like there to be a level of complexity with the characters, I like it when the victims/contestants of Johns traps manage to survive (even if its only for another round or two) and I like it when the actions of Jigsaw and his associates enter a kind of morally grey area where you DO start to wonder if what he’s doing may actually have some kind of ethical net positive.

‘Saw X’ is very much “my kind of “Saw” film”. Set in between the events of Saw 1 and 2 (and largely disregarding most of the stuff that happens from Saw 3 onwards) It follows Johns last roll of the dice, as he heads to mexico after hearing from a member of his cancer support group of an experimental therapy that supposedly has a 90% success rate, he arrives, pays a large sum of money for the treatment, but after the therapy he realises they havent done anything. he’s been swindled. Aaaand as you can probably guess, you dont wrong John Kramer without finding yourself strapped down and given the choice of losing one of your body parts, or losing your life.

I suppose what I like the most about ‘Saw X’ isnt what it does do, but rather what it omits. My biggest issue with most of the ‘Saw’ films past part 2 is they become SO bogged down in trying to retroactively backfill ‘Lore’ into the franchise that by the end of part 7, it began to feel like the world fell into 2 camps; those who worked for John Kramer, and those who fall victim to John Kramer.

This film bins off almost everything, its a ‘one off’ story that manages to feel seamlessly part of the ‘Saw’ universe, without being bogged down by it. Its here to just tell an interesting story (because we ALL know how this things going to end) and so the emphisis moves away from ‘What big reveal are we going to have in this one?’ and instead becomes ‘How good is this journey going to be and will I feel satisfied by the resolution?

Well; the script is 2 hours, but it REALLY doesnt feel it, When I can confidently say that ‘Spiral’ felt significantly longer than this Im really not exaggerating. This is a breezy 2 hours that starts off a little on the slow side, but just gets quicker and quicker in pacing as things develop until, by the end of the 3rd act we’re positively at fever pitch.

Probably the thing I enjoyed the most about this script is that, for the first time in about 7 movies, John Kramer ACTUALLY has solid motivation against the people who have wronged him. In a series thats seen people get their skin ripped off for being a bit racist, someone risk being hung by barbed wire because she works for a crappy insurance salesman, or having your mouth sown shut and risked being fed into a set of steel blades (while having to fight of a huge blinded guy with a shovel) because you happened to be a slightly skeezy lawyer…This feels like ACTUAL cause to have a movie, ACTUAL drive to make the audience care about the vengence…

Theres plenty of twists and turns that, while not entirely unexpected, did surprise in places. The tone is pretty solid and I actually really enjoyed that this entry really moved away from just being about the victims. here theres a lot more emotional complexity on display (especially in the back end of the film) As we really get to dig deep into John and Amandas relationship, Johns thought processes around why he does what he does, and I found his interactions with his victims to be really quite refreshing after 6 or so films where he’s largely in a pre-recorded format (if he’s there at all)

I thought the characters all had a bit of a deeper range to work with than the last few films, and I liked how the state of play worked out across the runtime. Not to mention the fact that this is a pretty closed circuit movie, you could realistically watch it on its own merits. you dont *necessarily* need to have seen any of the other ‘Saw’ films. As the script here borrows more heavily from the ‘Exploitation’, ‘extremist’ and ‘revenge’ subgenres than the other entries. This could easily be viewed on its own as a pretty solid ‘guy gets vengence on those that wronged him’ flick. Its a neat, slight pivot on the franchise which I really quite appreciated.

In fact, the only niggle I really had was the very VERY end of this thing. it kind of just stops with a couple of loose threads still to go, and while im fine with them leaving some loose strands here and there, it did somewhat dampen things when certain plot threads that were VERY important to the story were quite literally just abandoned…unlikely to ever really get resolution.

The direction here is superb, it feels fresh, it looks fresh, but theres still the telltale stylistic choices that help really keep this thing in line with the rest of the franchise to date. I feel like they really managed to get the best out of the cast and crew and this is probably my favourite looking film of the franchise.

Same goes for the cine, there some subtle grading nods to the original films, which is a nice way to help keep things tied together, but otherwise this really looks nice, it’s grimey grotty and wincingly realistic in places, the traps are interesting and really well captured, the editing is tight (even for 2 hours) keeps a slow build but solid rhythm theres plenty of experimentation and B-roll to hand to help keep this looking nice, the composition is equally fresh and really feels like a series thats matured and grown over it’s days of just slowly hacking down 10 people with no rhyme or reason.

The performances here are superb! easily some of the best of the franchise and easily some of the most rewarding. This is a huge character piece for Tobin Bell, who’s forever been rustling around in the background of these films or only seen in flashback. Here? he’s front and center for the whole production and he’s FABULOUS. giving a solidly ranged performance while carrying that pain of a terminal illness with total believability. His words feel solid, his movements perfect for this kind of role, I think it’s probably the performance of his career quite honestly.

Not to be outshone however, Shawnee Smith is superb here as Amanda, getting the range she really deserved but was denied across the first 3 ‘Saw’ films, we get to see a deeper range and subtlety with her character that I feel really helps round her out nicely, its just a shame she’s stuck with arguably the WORST haircut ever put to film due to this taking place between ‘Saw 1 and 2’ Synnøve Macody Lund as Cecelia Pederson is one of my favourite antagonists for this franchise, a truely malicious performance thats maybe a tad stereotypical. But ultimately such a delight to sit through.

In fact, I dont really think theres a bad performance here at all, theres maybe a couple that stray a *little* far into hammy terratory…but hey, Im all for a bit of ham here and there.

All in all? barring VERY minor flaws here and there, I think ‘Saw X’ is probably the strongest entry in the series, it’d certainly be the film I show people if they were curious about the franchise and wanted to go a bit deeper than the first couple.

I usually consider a film a success if I could see myself watching it again, I absolutely could see myself watching this again. If you felt the ‘Saw’ series got a bit repetative after part 2, skip to this and I dont think you’ll have many problems.

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

In many ways, im glad I’ve seen ‘Spiral’ at this point in my life, as having now seen it, i’ll be able to write this Letterboxd review, store it away and then NEVER watch it again. This review acting as a reminder to myself whenever I get morbidly curious to not even BEGIN to consider hitting play on this.

So ‘Jigsaw’ got panned by critics in 2017 for its attempt to soft reboot the franchise (which…I still dont entirely understand, it’s basically all the best bits of ‘Saw 2-7’ mashed together into one self contained feature rather than watered down and spread out over 6 movies…unoriginal? definitely. bad? absolutely not.)

So, the soft reboot plans got shelved and 4 years later, we have ‘Spiral’ another stab at soft rebooting the series and a film that takes place in the ‘Saw’ universe, but approaches the usual formulaic approach differently.

Set in the modern day of 2021 ‘Spiral’ picks up with members of a local police department slowly dissapearing and winding up dead by circumstances eerily similar to the ‘Jigsaw’ killings almost 20 years prior. It turns out that ‘Jigsaw’ is back on the scene (now wearing a pig mask exclusively…little to no Billy this time) and is picking off corrupt cops with the aim of trying to ‘purify’ the law enforcement.

Chris Rock plays Detective Zeke Banks, a morally questionable cop who’s managed to coast in the force for years because his father (played by Samuel L Jackson) was the chief inspector of the force.

When an incident happens that puts Banks in the firing line for incompitency, he’s buddied up with a partner, but the pair seem to have drawn the attention of ‘Jigsaw’ who now wants to play a game with them…

This films dull. I’ll give it credit in as far as it *does* try to do things a little bit differently to the previous entries (the emphisis here is less on the people trying to get out of the traps, and more on the police trying to track down whoever it is who’s doing the killings.) But while they do try and shake things up in some areas, there are others where they really dont do enough to break from the usual motions and the results are a ULTRA boring film that feels like more padding than actual story telling.

For a starters, the ‘Saw’ films are known for starting as psychological horror thrillers that emphisied gore, then later dropped the psychological element as it slowly drifted further and further into the gory slasher subgenre with just a hint of a thriller buried under the surface.

‘Spiral’ is just a straight cop thriller that occasionally remembers it is a ‘Saw’ influenced film and randomly drops in some of THE worst traps in the entire franchises run to date. The pacing is slow, lumbering and boing to the point that it becomes hard to remember exactly whats supposed to be happening in this thing, because all the scenes feel the same. Its just 93 minutes of info dumping this new universes lore…lore thats filled with padding meaning you dont really know what information is worth retaining for the ‘clever’ end twist reveal and what stuff is just aimless chatter used to pad out the runtime.

They tweak the tone slightly here (at least in the first half) to introduce more sarcastic and dry comedy. But this then knocks the film off kilter as the second half ramps up and the slight comedy angle is ditched all together in favour of just going full on into the gritty cop drama angle.

The characters just arnt interesting or engaging. they do bother to give them some history and complexity. But non of the characters feel like they have any degree of uniqueness to them. Only made worse by the dialogue which is literally 90% stereotypical anti hero/dirty cop quotes.

There isnt really any kind of warm up or down here, so the act structuring all kind of homodgonizes together. around the mid point of the movie it does suddenly get a *bit* of a pep, but nowhere near enough to carry this thing to the end credits. they dont really signal act changes. It just feels like one long drudge of a script thats here to read you a lore bible and then hope the sequel lets it actually DO something with it…which…had they stopped to check the quality of the movie they were making, they’d know a sequel was DEFINITELY not on the cards.

The direction is more or less the standard of studio quality. It isnt trying anything new, it feels like a film made by a director who’s phoning it in for the money. it has no creative flare or zeal, no heart, no passion behind the lens. its documenting a movie. Not engaging us with a movie.

The cine’s also flat, to standard and thats about it, compositions okay, but unremarkable. the edit is pretty dire with long, slow paced sequences broken up with seizure inducing edits and most annoyingly of all, for some reason the block colour correcting style of ‘Saws 3-6’ is back again and just as annoying as I remembered it being.

The performances are almost all phoned in. This is a film starring Chris Rock and Samuel L Jackson as a father/son cop duo trying to hunt down the Jigsaw killer, it could have been great. But they both look so tired and done with this movie before it even really gets started. its a paycheque for them. A driveway. thats it. The supporting cast are equally as bad, theres the odd glimpse of genuine sincerity in the performances here and there, generally from the folks for whome, this is there biggest break and they want to impress…But its few and far between and broadly speaking, they just get through the script as dryly as possible and hope the next gigs more valuable.

If I was speculating, ‘Spiral’ to me feels like a movie that only exists to retain an IP license or for some kind of tax reason. I cant in good faith think for a moment that someone looked at the ‘Saw’ franchise, looked at the script for this and went ‘THATS WHAT THE PUBLICS HUNGRY FOR!’ I’d honestly believe that someone submitted a Cop drama to the studio and was told the only way it’d get made is if it was a ‘Saw’ movie.

What we have here is a 93 minute movie that feels about double the length of that, thats totally drab on almost every level. When they made ‘Jigsaw’ it was a gamble as to whether the tweaks to tone and story would work or not. I dont think the critics of the time knew how lucky they were, because ‘Spiral’ is what happenes when you try to make a ‘Saw’ movie that shakes things up a bit and it goes wrong. A poor movie that im glad I never have to watch again.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/spiral-from-the-book-of-saw/

At this point 8 entries into the ‘Saw’ franchise Im pretty much convinced that the world that exists in this universe is basically made up of ‘People who end up in traps built by John Kramer’ and ‘People who work for John Kramer’ and thats about it.

‘Jigsaw’ see’s us FINALLY after 7 movies set across a 6-8 month window in 2004, jump ahead in time to *approx* 2014/2015. The baggage is dropped, Hoffman? Amanda? Dr. Gordon!? Who!? yeh forget about them, they’re gone. and like opening a window, the fresh air of a new plotline smells so much sweeter as it clears away the stench of a fart ridden and musty room of a plot that had more than outstayed its welcome.

A clean break, its 2014/15, John Kramer, Jigsaw and all that other stuff is a distant memory, nothings happened for 10 years and the world is starting to move on…Only suddenly a man appears on a rooftop of a building, holding a detinator and ranting that 5 people will die unless he makes an urgent decision. Holding a detinator, he clicks the trigger and sets in motion a new game. With 5 unlucky participants who all have sins to confess. The cops are put back out on the trail to find the ‘Jigsaw’ killer, but with John Kramer having died 10 years prior, who is commiting the killings? It couldnt possibly be John…or could it!?

And, honestly, this isnt a ‘good’ movie, but I enjoyed it. Its the cinematic equivilent of a dirty DIRTY hamburger and fries. Its not good for me. but after having sat through 7 movies that felt like unseasoned fries, to get a bit of flavour here was very satisfying.

The script isnt *that* different from previous ‘Saw’ films, but by finally severing itself from the previous entries, it allows the story to grow and develop in its own way that feels natural to this universe, while also not straying *too* far as to become alien.

It’s a zippy 92 minute production that has enough going on to keep the brain ticking over, but not so much that it becomes confusing. The traps are relatively well made and executed well, though some of the ‘twists’ around how the trap should have REALLY been done, vs. How our survivors tried to solve them were a little bit farfetched.

Equally; the pool of victims ‘Jigsaw’ pulled from this time around was a little shallow, an example being ‘someone stole a purse that only had $3.15 in cash in it, but stealing the purse led to the lady it was stole from having a heart attack’…it really isnt worth the death she had here…

I like that this leans *slightly* into humourous terratory, not so much that i’d class it as anywhere near comedy. But just enough to add a little contrast to the utter bleakness of these movies. It was a field that Saw 6 and 7 dabbled a little bit in, but here I feel they get the tonal mix just about right.

The characters are a bit problematic for me, they’re kind of ‘one note’ across the runtime, and pretty much always pick the absolute worst options when it comes to trying to solve the puzzles or trying to save their cohorts. I can forgive a little short sightedness when faces with a stress inducing situation, I cant forgive character who’ll willingly throw themselves into a meat pulverizer while screaming ‘I DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO!?!’

I enjoyed the twists and turns in this one, and while the final resolution was a *bit* of a stretch and in many ways was actually kind of annoying. The journey to get to that point was entertaining, engaging and most importantly, fun. How much value this story will have on a rewatch? I cant honestly say. Probably not a lot for me personally as, once a mysteries been solved, you kind of get 1 more rewatch to see all the elements you missed the first time, and then after that…well, you know everything that happens.

Time has been kind to the franchise with this one, the 7 year gap between ‘Saw 3D’ and this film has led to a new take on the direction, we have a very nicely put together studio flick that has decent lighting (no overly dark shots with block colour correction to be found here!) solid blocking and clear communication to the cast and crew about what was required.

If I had to be nitpicky, i’d argue that some of the CGI (particularly the fake blood) is pretty poor quality and left a lot to be desired. But; with that being said, I dont know whether to lay that down at the feet of the producers, the directors, the editors, or all of the above. I feel had they stuck with practical blood and gore effects, this probably would have looked a lot better.

The cine here is delightful. For the most part we ACTUALLY have a ‘Saw’ film that isnt afraid of using colour! and the curse of having to block colour correct all your footage to ‘Urine yellow’ or ‘electric blue’ because your entire film is based around the events of 2 movies 10 years ago that had a strong aestethic is lifted! Here? we have rich sumptuous colours reds, greens, oranges and blues all nicely saturated and working effectively!

There are a couple of scenes later on in the movie that do slide back into that ‘yellowey’/’orangey’ block colouration, but at least here, they bother to do specific grading rather than block grading (meaning the backgrounds get a solid dose of yellow/orange/Blue, but the foreground stuff gets a seperate grade to help them really stand out)

Composition is really solid here, If I had to complain though, there are moments where a bit more B-roll would have been nicer to help break up the flow of the sequences a bit more. but on the whole, this is just kind of a nicely shot, but not astounding body of work that does what it needs to do and then moves on.

The edit is also something im quite happy about, sequences have great timing, are paced well and largely only take up the time they need. they’ve massively reduced the number of seizure inducing flash edits that used to strike through these movies whenever a trap started. The only grumble I have really is a mild one, and that’s that some of the trap sequences get a little messy on arrangement. I think they were trying to make things feel intense, but at least a couple of times I was actually left just thinking ‘what am I supposed to be looking at?’

I cant really talk about the performances in detail because…Spoilers. But what I will say is our cast are pretty rock solid, they have great physicality and animation, they use the set space and props well, and in the 3rd act when some of the bigger twists happen it just keeps getting better quite honestly!

I also kind of dug the soundtrack here, its a bit different from previous entries, but does feel similar enough to not *completely* change the tone of things. It only added to the freshness of it all.

Honestly? ‘Jigsaw’ isnt perfect. If your really into the ‘Saw’ films you’ll probably be annoyed at the fact that the plot holes from the last movie (And other movies)have been completely airlocked. If your into your suspense thrillers, you’ll probably be SUPER annoyed by the ending of this film. And if you were really getting into the more ‘Slasher’ heavy vibes that the last couple of films were dabbling with, you’ll be annoyed they’ve reigned that back in.

But personally? Non of the above mattered that much to me. ‘Jigsaw’ is probably the first film since Part 2 that I could pretty reasonably see myself putting on again as part of a Halloween marathon, or just if I wanted ‘Saw’ vibes. It’s ‘clean break’ attitude means I dont have to remember 7 films worth of lore and deleted scenes to just spend 92 minutes watching a dozen or so people get brutally gored to death.

It has a flawed, but nontheless entertaining script, decent direction and cine, the cast are fun to be around, it sounds solid. I dont have any issue with ‘Jigsaw’ honestly. I’d say if you’ve seen the first few ‘Saw’ movies but kind of got fed up with them feeling ‘Samey’ to maybe give this one a go. i’d say if you were coming into the ‘Saw’ franchise with fresh eyes, watch 1 and 2, then jump to this one.

Let me put it this way, outside of ‘Saw 2’ this is the first one i’ve watched where i’ve googled how much the bluray is while the credits rolled. So it must have been doing something right.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/jigsaw-2017/

And so we reach ‘Saw 3D’ (also known as ‘Saw 7’, Also known as ‘Saw: The Final Chapter’) And a ‘thrilling’ closer to the ‘Saw’ franchise that ties EVERYTHING off, leaving no loose threads and does so in such a way thats a delight to audiences who must have left the theaters feeling fulfilled and Satisfy-Im just kidding. This things a hot mess.

The plot picks up where the last film ended, Hoffmans still on the run, Jill has decided to go into police protection and is willing to dish the dirt on all of Hoffmans antics and a new game begins! This one involving a self help guru who’s in the process of selling his latest book where he talks about how he ‘Survived Jigsaw’ and used the experience to better himself as a person. This goes as far as a scene in which survivors of Jigsaws traps are brought together as a support group (with several cameos from the last few ‘Saw’ films) to discuss what happened after they survived the traps.

Its all well and good, except for one problem. The Guru has NEVER been trapped by Jigsaw. Its all a hoax…until now. He’s captured and set a 60 minute multi trap challenge involving his publicist, motivator, wife and others with his own trap challenges along the way. With plenty of twists and turns to keep things going!

And this really is just quite a poor way to bow out the franchise really. The only solidly good thing I can say about it is the traps are actually really solid in this one, they’re interesting to see unfold and that the script does have moments of genuine interest.

But for all intents and purposes, the germination of ‘Saws’ transition from a psychological horror thriller series into just a gory slasher series is complete with this one. Gore and violence is held WAY above any kind of narrative strands, the MASSIVE plot twists and reveals from the first 2 or 3 ‘Saw’ movies are a thing of the past, as the film not ONLY continues its deviation from the original rules of the first film by just, straight up murdering innocent people as part collateral for the guilty persons crimes. But it also forgets that, for the audience, ‘Saw’ puzzles are only entertaining if theres a chance some of them *could* survive.

This film is part of the problem thats been developing now for about 2-3 of these films. By basically killing everyone, you set the expectation of ANYONE surviving these things to zero…Which damages the scripting across the board. It means you dont get invested in any characters because you know they wont make it to the end, its just a question of how soon they’ll exit. But it also damages the film in the sense that, by not having survivors, you consistently make this a lone character piece. When some of the most interesting moments from past ‘Saw’ films have been when characters have been able to group up after surviving their traps and use their mixed skills to try and work out alternatives to the existing puzzles.

As such, because of how they’ve made this thing, it all becomes incredibly predictable very VERY quickly. With any plot twists that DID turn up being either pre guessed…or worse, totally stupid. With one particularly BIG reveal in the 3rd act (which I wont mention here) that basically RE-retcons the ENTIRE franchise inserting ANOTHER character into proceedings who we’ve not seen or heard from AT ANY POINT up until this one. Which made me audibly groan.

The scripts kind of dull ultimately, its your standard A-plot with the cops, B-plot with the guru solving puzzles. But its all slow burn on the A-plot, and its a slow burn to nothing ultimately, with the B-plot being the more interesting of the two, but also being repetative, silly and at times downright awful.

The pacing is slower than usual, but just about manages to keep up, the tone is a little wonky here too, theres a couple of more comedy driven moments…Im not entirely convinced if they *were* supposed to be comedy moments…But they didnt work for me.

Our characters are seriously under-developed too, they basically jettison half of the loose threads from the end of ‘Saw 6’ with a gloss over pre-titles sequence that annoyed me.

Its a bad script in my opinion, a good idea. just…REALLY badly executed…and if, as they imply here, they were considering ending (or at least long pausing) the franchise here with THIS!? then it only makes the dissapointment even greater.

The direction and cine are fine. its continuing to build on the style and pacing from the previous entries, this one has a bit more of a nuance on the colour grade, which I was happy with. But otherwise, its a reletively solid work for the most part, its compositionally well handled, well blocked, the sequences are well constructed (though the heavy emphisis on the ‘3D’ elements and total lack of creative editing as seen in the last 2-3 movies is a bit of a letdown) I continue to appreciate that they save their flashback/retroactive revisions for clustered specific portions of the movie, rather than making it feel like this is just the deleted scenes of ‘Saw’ 3-6 cut together with 10 minutes of new footage.

I dont think however that this looks or feels any better than ‘Saw’ 5 or 6 and if anything it kind of feels basic comparatively. Same with the scoring, same with the performances…Like…they arnt *bad*, they just arnt great and they certainly arnt anything better than whats come before.

I dunno, I kind of liked the vibe this one gave off, I could see myself putting it on again at some point, but I dont think I could really recommend it. Its a good idea executed badly and a really poor way to round of what, at best, up to this point has been a middling to poor franchise.

‘Saw’ a franchise with good ideas, and terrible decisions.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/saw-3d/

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/