Before I jump into this review I will admit that I have never seen any of the Saw films. It is a franchise that has never interested me and the whole "torture porn" genre of horror is something that I am just not in to. The reason I say this before I dive in to the review is to give some sort of background on my relationship with the franchise so that my review can be seen from that point of view because I know that there a lot of fans of these films and I want you to know that is fine, I can't disagree with your point of view as I have not seen the films myself. However, if Jigsaw (2017) is any indication of the quality of the rest of the franchise then I will happily put my middle finger up to it and leave it to those who love it, because this film is utter, utter shit. The film's story is what you would expect, morally questionable people have been captured and put into a game by the titular Jigsaw killer and the authorities are attempting to find out who is behind it. This time it is different though because the Jigsaw killer, John Kramer (Tobin Bell), has been dead for ten years. Despite this obvious fact which would preclude him from being the culprit all the evidence points to him, with his blood being on the victim's bodies, an audio file that has his voice on it and his signature jigsaw mark placed on all the victims. At the same time the victims of the game are being picked off by Jigsaw's various extravagant death traps and it is a race against time to find these people and discover who is committing these crimes at the same time.
I will start this review by saying some positive things about it, although even as I write this I realise these positives are either not actual positives or start as positives and turn into negatives very quickly. The main positive is that this could possibly have been my comedy of the year had I seen this in 2017. Unfortunately, this film is a horror film, but I'll twist this into a positive note or I'll just be shitting on this film for the next 800 words and that’s not fun for anyone. So yes, the film is a horror, but it isn't a horror meant to scare you. It’s meant to make you feel uncomfortable, make you squirm, gross you out, but in attempting to do so in a way that either matches or goes above the earlier films in the franchise it goes so over the top that it got genuine out loud laughs from me. One guys had opens up like a fucking flower for Christ’s sake, Jesus bloody wept it is a marvellous bit of comedy. Honestly if this film was a satire of the earlier ones I would not be surprised. So, the positive is that the kills are entertaining, even if not in the way the filmmakers wanted, mainly because I don't believe the filmmakers wanted the deaths to be so ungodly stupid. The second positive is the twist ending, or at least one aspect of it. I won't go into it here but there is a nice narrative twist that is revealed towards the end which I appreciated and a do applaud for the film for the creativity of it. Unfortunately, this ending goes on to shit itself by explaining the twist for ten fucking minutes and making it so convoluted that it went from interesting to farcical very quickly, which is a shame because it could have got me leaving the film with some good graces. As it is though, I did not leave the film with any love for it due to the reasons I am about to jump into.
First of all, the film is just so bloody boring. There was a moment where I checked to see how long was left, which is never a good sign, and then checked back again after what I thought had been twenty to thirty minutes. It wasn't. It was ten. Fucking ten. It was like a punch to the gut. This film was meant to be a tense experience where I would feel uncomfortable, but as I watched it, curled up in bed I felt comfortable enough to just doze off and have the film play as ambient music noise in the background, but I persevered. The lack of entertainment wasn't helped by the less than stellar performances. I would point out particular actors who were especially good or especially bad, but everyone was poor but not poor enough to stick in my memory. Every performance and every character was so forgettable. I’m literally writing this immediately after seeing the film and I can't remember a single character’s name. I'm not even going to get into specific actors, if you want to see who was crap in this film you can look on the imdb. The writing of the film, except that one aspect of the twist, is also shit. Contrived, cliched and dull the script seems like it was written by a guy who could not give a shit and just wanted to pick his cheque up and buy his Starbucks. The most heinous crime of the film is that the kills are shit. This is a series whose sole reason for existing is its imaginative and creative kills, and this one came up with kills who are exceedingly crap. Are the rest of the films like this? Please let me know, because if they are I don't get why these films are popular.
This film is bad. I have not hidden the fact that I did not like this film in this review and I won't hide it now, I don't like it. At all. But one thing I will point out is that this film clearly isn't for me, it is for people who are already fans of the series. This becomes clear in one scene of film where several of the old torture devices from other films in the series are displayed in a studio. This is a clear and obvious moment for the fans to be like "Ohhhh I know that, how exciting!" and it was when this scene came up that I realised that no matter how I felt about the film it didn't really matter at the end of the day because I am clearly not the target audience. So, would I recommend the film? Absolutely fucking not, I think it is utter crap and you'd only be wasting your time by seeing it, unless you are a fan of the rest of the series. If that is the case, you will most likely get everything you want and expect out of this film and will most likely enjoy yourself. As for me, you can count me out of this film and the franchise.