You Do Have a Choice – Whether To Scream or Not
The eighth instalment in the Saw film series certainly tortures its audience – but not in the twisted horror kind of way, but in the lacklustre sequel kind of way.
Set ten years after the last Jigsaw Killer trap was played (presumably the events of Saw 3D), a determined veteran police detective investigates a new string of murders believed to be the work of the Jigsaw Killer, John Kramer (played by the eternally confronting Tobin Bell), who was killed in Saw III, so the police begin hunting down a supposed copycat killer obsessed with the original murders, resulting in the discovery of a brutal conspiracy within law enforcement.
Right from the opening sequence, the movie fails to feel at all like a true Saw film. It didn’t have a chilling cold open featuring a diabolical trap that you know the victim will fail, instead it features more of a police procedural action series opening that results in any sensible viewer asking one burning question: why? Why did this film need to happen? When Saw fans were left with a reasonably conclusive epilogue in Saw 3D, why bother with a poor quality sequel seven years later?
As someone who watched and enjoyed all the original Saw films, I guess the truth is that this series had very little room for the plot and characters to expand, and after the third film it seemed to descend into a very narrow hole where the creators put it to rest, until they shamefully resurrected it this year by releasing a new film that does not serve the series in any way, it doesn’t contribute to the narrative of the horror saga and it’s actors (aside from Tobin Bell of course) are just plain awful. One even has to wonder if a fresh, straight up reboot of the franchise in a new trilogy or even Netflix miniseries would have been much more entertaining and palatable.
This movie is certainly not the ending the Saw franchise deserves (I’m hoping they don’t make a sequel), and there are more powerful, more intriguing original horror films out this year that I would certainly recommend over Jigsaw – don’t fall for this trap of a film!