Jigsaw (2017)

This was an unnecessary movie. as a fan of the saw franchise minus the 7th one. i thought they might of tried harder after a long gap but they honestly went backwards. the movie tries going back to how the 1st and 2nd one was, with it been more of a detective movie. however it just repeats everything we have seen before but without the violence. they reduced the gore a lot compared to all the other ones apart from the final scene. i would honestly just stick with the first 5 for a good saw movie

Fmovies: "Let's Play A Game", those simple words haunted the theaters for years, signaling the start of yet another slasher movie in the Saw series. What started out as a unique twist to the serial killer saga was only the start to a face cringing, spine tingling, sometimes nauseating saga that hooked people in until around the sixth-seventh iteration when it finally ended. That was until this year, where the saga was to be reanimated in hopes of bringing more bucks to the theaters. Will this eighth installment have the ability to defy death like it's protagonist antihero, or is it dead like the poor victims of his games. Only one way to find out and that is read my friends, so let's get started!

LIKES:

Fast-Pace: With all the slow movies I have been seeing, I give props to the Saw series maintaining their consistent pace. From start to finish, the tale keeps moving, sparing no second for unnecessary details or attempts at prolonged character development. The mystery of figuring out the identity of the game master, mixed with the spread-out trials that promise a messy end are well-balanced to keep things going.

Decent Characters: A horror movie often has many brain-dead characters begging to be chainsaw fodder. Fortunately, Saw movies continue to choose players who have a little more complexity and skills than many of the Spring Break teens favored. The tradition lives on, as each player has a little more buried within, still having a few obviously destined corpses, but others who have a shot at making it out. And for those not in the game, but trying to solve the mystery, they too have some layers to them that may or may not be pertinent to the story. It's those engaging elements that are crafted in the story, making them more engaging to follow.

The Presentation: Another component I still like is the presentation of the movie. Many go for the kills, but the better component for me is how they separate the story into two settings. One is still the players trying to escape the closes thing to hell's torture chamber, while the other are the outside characters hunting down the "maniac" that continues to weave his traps. The ability to entangle these two components, balancing their timing to provide clues and hints to the story all while keeping you invested in the game. Such a dynamic presentation provides those checks and balances necessary for a slasher movie, and keeping things as fresh as possible.

Twist: As many of you know, Saw movies are all about the ability to throw that last wrench into the gears to blow your mind. Despite my experience with predicting endings, this one got me. The questions I asked were on the right path, but they were able to drop enough interfering factors to throw me off the trail. Jigsaw once again impresses me with their storytelling, and their mastery of presentation. I can't say much more, but ask the right questions and you might get the answers.

DISLIKES:

Lazy Deaths: Those first few movies were convoluted in their traps. They had designed devices that were an impressive display of imagination, horror, and engineering that gave everyone a kick in terms of design. While Jigsaw still has the impressive connections and storytelling, it unfortunately fails in the terms of the traps themselves. They are surprisingly simple for the most part, and a little more reserved than I expected in this modern era. Yes, there is still plenty of blood in this battle for moral consequences, but they didn't involve

Despite the last SAW movie being called "The Final Chapter" 2017 brought us yet another addition to the franchise and it's a real mixed bag.

I think the SAW series started off very well, they showed real promise were clever well constructed movies but alas alike so many other horror franchises it got milked into mediocrity.

The movies gradually got worse and worse and they felt desperate, blatant cash ins and it was such a shame that such a franchise had become tarnished. These things need to know when to call it a day and SAW didn't.

So here we have another game, another spate of killings in gruesome fashion but this time it looks like Jigsaw is really back from the grave!

Sprinkled with good ideas Jigsaw is certainly an improvement on other recent efforts and delivers a few twists along the way. It doesn't however come close to the dizzying heights of the first few films.

I'd advise fans of the franchise give this a go but truly believe that this should be the last. Let SAW die before it becomes another franchise whose credibility is gone because it's creators didn't know when to stop.

The Good:

Passable twist

Tobin Bell

The Bad:

Still not coming close to its origins

Essentially more of the same

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

I still love Jigsaws style and struggle to see him as an antagonist

Jigsaw fmovies. I was never a huge fan of the Saw series. I enjoyed the first one which I thought personally was a pretty excellent horror movie. However after the first film, which did have a nice theme about life, the Saw films became more and more gore over substance. In the sequels the only major factor for these films to exist were the violent traps. We had the alleged Final Chapter in 2010, but when there is a chance for the franchise to make money again, I guess it wasn't. This installment I will say is the best Saw sequel we have had up to this point (which really doesn't say much). Years after the events of the previous chapter, the Jigsaw killer has returned. However is it John Kramer or not? This is the question that the main characters of the film try to answer. However the plot is so uninteresting but also confusing, especially when keeping in mind the other chapters. I will say though continuity has never been a strength of the Saw films. The characterizations were also unimaginative, and had nothing to say. They weren't even interesting. So we have a murder mystery without a compelling story, uninteresting characters and no interesting ideas. The film doesn't even have the luxury of offering any scares. Yea sure there were the easy jump scares, but I was never shivering when seeing this. The traps are also not that gruesome, so even in that category it fails. The only thing I will say about this film is that everyone is trying. The direction is somewhat competent, all the actors are trying (some work, some don't) and they try to take Saw back to the roots of the original.

Very disappointing. Not only they rehashed many ideas from the previous movies, but the final reveal was also done SEVERAL times in the previous saws.

I won't go into details because of spoilers, but every time some plot twist happened in the movie I was like "Wait, they already did that in Saw X". In fact, I since I saw all the Saws (pun intended) I was able to correctly guess what the final reveal will be because like I said, they already done it before.

And most of the traps were just plain dumb, some of them giving a lot of room for cheating, which broke the immersion for me, because the "gamers" were acting like idiots who for some reason switched their brains off and walked into them like sheep. Other traps required pretty much clairvoyance from the Jigsaw, because to set up them the way they went, he would have to see the fricking future.

Early Saws used to be great, but this movie, and several previous ones, are just plain bad and the franchise needs to be put to rest at this point. And if the decide to make another one, just don't rehash the same stuff over and over and over again.

Since the Saw franchise is one of my biggest guilty pleasures when it comes to horror, I've been hoping for a new installment ever since The Final Chapter was supposed to end the franchise back in 2010. Even though the movies got progressively worse, there is something about this franchise that always draws me back and makes me want to re-watch it.

I had high expectations for Jigsaw because of two reasons: one, the producers stated in an interview that they were offered more than a hundred scripts for a new movie from different writers, but had never been pleased with any of them until they discovered a script so good, which ultimately got picked to be adapted; second, the Spierig brothers, Jigsaw's directors, had previously directed Predestination, such a smart and enticing sci-fi time- travel movie that I liked quite a lot.

After seeing Jigsaw, I left the theater disappointed. I'll start with what I enjoyed:

The score by Charlie Clouser is just as fabulous as it has always been and manages to go in line perfectly with each scene.

The performances didn't bother me at all, although none of the actors really gets to shine. Laura Vandervoort and Paul Braunstein stood out here, with the latter generating some funny moments worthy of admiration.

The direction was very polished and the movie was competently filmed, but the Spierig brothers weren't given much to show their creativity on. This leads me to the negatives.

The CGI is very good. There is, however, one scene in which I was feeling as if I was watching one of the most recent Resident Evil movies and that didn't really work for me.

What I didn't like:

The ideas in this movie and its overall plot are somewhat underdeveloped. I know that this is supposed to be a new "beginning" for these movies, but as a franchise starter, I wanted more to be explored. The plot falls flat because the movie cuts from scene to scene so swiftly and tries to cram multiple narratives into 85 minutes, that ultimately none of them makes an impact.

Saw is known for its visceral traps and torture devices, so I was looking forward to seeing more of that. However, the game presented in this movie has next to no memorable traps. That is because they are a lot tamer than what we've seen before and they simply can't hold a candle to all the ingenious traps from the past movies.

The character development is another issue in this movie. The characters are so uni-dimensional, with some of them being there only to fill the screen. And I'm referring to some of the main casting here. Also, character arcs are left unfinished and the movie felt like it ended when the most important part of the story was about to happen.

The editing undermines what could've been some very suspenseful scenes because of its sloppiness, by cutting from one narrative (the game) to the other (the investigation) at random moments.

Now, it all comes down to the twist. Was it good and unexpected? Well, no, not really. It's not necessarily because you can predict it from miles away (for which the movie offers hints throughout the run-time) due to its small set of characters, but because it had no resonance for me. It didn't blow me away and you could've predicted it from the marketing of the movie alone. Just like with the traps, it just doesn't have the same visceral feel as the past movies and it doesn't really make you crave for the release of the next chapter.
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