Jigsaw I will admit was the reason I went and watched all the other Saw movies. That franchise was dead and gone in my eyes, but of course, Paranormal Activity fizzled out so Saw had to give it one last shot.

Jigsaw is both a prequel and a sequel. We see what we think is a trap being played out in real time but really the characters we are following were part of John’s first trap.

The killer Logan has remade that first saw trap and is part of the team who do the autopsies on the bodies. Of course everyone believes it’s John back from the dead and he has even set up tapes that sound just like him for effect.

But what’s the point? Well he was part of the first Saw trap, but he failed at the first room. Instead of letting him go or killing him off or whatever John decided to hire him as his first sidekick. I find this so strange, so like John goes up to this guy and is like:

Hey sorry I tried to make your life better and punish you for giving me the wrong diagnosis that could’ve helped stop my cancer but you want to help me make more traps just like that one?

And then he’s just like

Yeah bro sounds tight let’s do this thing. We be poppin bullets in these people’s heads

Or something like that I don’t even know. I apologise for that, please retract and return to the review.

So anyway, Logan joins John in his quest to make people appreciate their lives more. Then he has an idea to recreate the first trap ever, because why not something to do, and he fools everyone! Muhahaha.

But does he? Well this was weird. At the end he wants to pin it on a cop called Detective Halloran because he is corrupt but instead of squishing him like Hoffman does to Strahm he puts the cop in a trap and kills him sort of Stranger Things monster style. But surely, if he was the one who was behind the traps in the first place, why would he put himself in a trap? Wouldn’t you at least hide the body? But no, instead Logan closes the door in the old style ‘game over’ fashion. It was weird and in my opinion not thought out entirely well.

But overall was this movie good? Yes, yes it was. It had a good storyline that was easy to follow and was fun, had the old characters back we liked and new ones that weren’t horrific and had good traps.

But was it a Saw movie? In my opinion no. This movie felt to me too fancy, too pristine and well put together and that is not what a Saw movie is. A Saw movie is a film with little budget and a tight space to work in. It’s industrial and has a constant feeling of dread and terror. This movie was 1. Too open and airy and felt almost safe for the audience 2. Too high end and felt way too pretty and HD to be a Saw movie and 3. Was too clean. Even the murders didn’t seem to have that much blood or gore. I could watch the girl with her eyes and ears bleeding fine because it didn’t feel real. It wasn’t over the top or too gross and that’s what Saw is for me.

But then again, is that just because that’s what Saw became? If you go back to the first movie there is minimal gore and you barely actually get to see Doctor Gordon saw his own foot off. It’s much more left to the audience’s imaginations and this movie seems to be similar. Yes of course we see death but the pools of blood and pain and anguish in the characters faces isn’t there as much. Maybe this movie is modelled more on the original and less on the sequels and that’s why it didn’t feel like a Saw movie, because the Saw movie it mimicked was so long ago.

Overall I would definitely watch this movie again and would happily watch more movies like it in this format. Give me pretty locations with a sinister story hiding behind closed doors. Give me traps that are better thought out and have more meaning to them in relation to the location. Although I do have to say was there someone throwing the knives and saws down at the couple in the silo? Because that scene just became hilarious for me at that point.

This movie reminded me more of Cube and movies like that and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

What did you think of Jigsaw?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding