"Jigsaw": A Hollow Shell of a Greater Iteration

   

    So it's been some time since I've actually gone to the cinema, took in a new flick, and sat down to write about it. I guess that will happen when your life is taken up by graduate school. Enough about me though, that stuff's boring. Let's get down to it.

   Having not been to the cinema for a handful of weeks (for some that might not seem like a big deal, but for The Optimist, a few weeks is like an eternity. I've been going through withdrawls like crazy!); I had a plethora of choices to choose from. I decided I would stick with something opening this week. So, since it's the Halloween season and all, I chose to check out the latest installment of the franchise that had once championed Halloween for over five years. Jigsaw, the eighth film in the Saw franchise, returns to the world of torturous traps and epic games that has creeped out fans for years. I was a late-comer to the franchise. I gave in one night on a work trip and watched the first film, and to my suprise I found it actually quite the entertaining thriller. Was not expecting that. It was well-written, twisted, gory but not over-done, and had a crazy ending that I did not see coming. After that, I was hooked. The second film, though not quite as good as the first, was still really engaging, with a heightened twist on the ideas presented in the first. Then, it all kind of goes down hill from there. What was once a promising thriller franchise soon became a gruesome, disgusting, and sometimes nauseating one-up-fest from film to film. The term "torture porn" soon became synonamous with the franchise and it was unfortunate. So, seven years after the last film, a new iteration as risen. Does it harken to the greatness found in the early chapters of the franchise? Or is it just another piece of torture porn? Well...

   It's not that great. It's pretty "meh" as a matter of fact. However, it's nowhere near as nauseating as some of its predecessors. The story is as formulaic as any other Saw film. Bodies are turning up around the city, each having met a uniquely gruesome demise. As the investigation proceeds, evidence points to one suspect: John Kramer, the man known as Jigsaw. This poses a unique twist given that John Kramer died in the third film (spoiler alert?)...or did he? Well, to find the answer to that, you'd have to see the movie for yourself. But on the surface, Jigsaw is as paint-by-the-numbers as you can get with a Saw film. People who have done terrible things are placed into terrible traps and are given the opportunity to save themselves at the cost of some incredible physical discomfort. Is there a twist of some sort? Maybe. Maybe not. What I will say though is that Jigsaw does attempt to focus more on the story --an extremely weak and bland story -- rather than soley on its insane traps.

   After the first two films, I'm alomst positive people went to see these movies only to see what crazy shenanigans were going to occur. Jigsaw has some interesting traps for sure. The opening trap, seen in the trailer, where the group of 'contestants' are chained to bucket helmets and are pulled towards a wall of rusty, spinning saws (wink wink) was extrememly unnerving; and there's one that involves a motorcycle and a giant spinning cone of death...(I'll just let you think about that for a second)...that one got me. Although, as outlandish as these traps are, they're not as bad as some of the ones in past films. Outside of these crazy traps, there isn't much in the way of quality to this film. The acting is terrible, the writing is weak at best, and the slightest bit of plausibility is thrown out the window; which if you're a fan of the franchise you'll know this quite well. No other film franchise that I can think of requires its audience to shut their brains off completely more so than the Saw franchise. If you try to think about how things are done, how these traps are so meticulously planned and executed, especially once the film reveals it to you at the end, you'll go stir crazy.

   So, should you go see Jigsaw? The heck if I know. If you like the other films, then you'll get exactly what you would want or expect from a Saw film. There was a point over ten years ago where every year at Halloween a new Saw came out. They're highly successful films, and I would imagine with Halloween coming up next week that Jigsaw will take the weekend. In a nutshell, the movie is a gruesome, hollow shadow of what had made this franchise great from the start. It's the epitome of turn-your-brain-off cinema, and if you're down with that, and don't tend to get too squirmish, then have it.