‘Jigsaw” has a lot of pieces missing. The plot is a bloody mess, the script is a mangled corpse, and the actors are mostly DOA. But watching the movie isn’t absolute torture if you’re the right audience.
The movie takes place 10 years after the final events of the previous Saw installment, distancing itself from the series a bit to keep the backstory as vague legend and allow those less familiar with the series to still figure out what’s going on in this sort of soft reboot of the franchise. And there is a certain awareness about it — everyone involved seems to know that there is not much room to evolve this cheap horror series beyond B-grade cinema at this point, and on that field the film does somewhat succeed.
The series known for its disturbingly inventive scenarios of deadly traps and torture devices doesn’t stray far from the umpteenth sequel formula, but at least doesn’t have the same grimy and visually green filter of cheapness the series is known for. The movie is skillfully shot and feels like it actually had a budget.
Two detectives (Cle Bennett and Callum Keith Rennie) are led on the trail of a copycat of the infamous (and dead) Jigsaw killer, assisted by a duo of forensic examiners (Matthew Passmore and Hannah Emily Anderson). They are led to believe that several victims have been captured and are being subjected to more of the horrible traps that the previous killer was known for. The film shifts between the criminal investigators to the trapped victims, turning the movie into a violent race against time to find these missing people being tortured in an isolated location.
The victims are a mix of horror tropes and those typical of the franchise, all people who have done something terrible but don’t necessarily deserve to be subjected to the torturous traps they are forced to go through. The four actors playing the victims can scream convincingly and over act enough to be entertaining through their cringe-inducing situations and demises.
The script is bad, the acting is bad, the story is bad, but let’s be honest: If you’re walking into the eighth movie of this franchise having seen any or all of the previous films, you’re not watching to see anything wildly different. If there’s one positive thing about “Jigsaw” it’s that the movie knows it’s bad, and everybody involved ham-and-cheeses it up to turn it into a cross between trashy cop drama and hilariously awful horror.
Whether or not it’s worth seeing in theaters though, is dependent on your experience. There was a nice family in my theater who, before the movie, mentioned to me that they had watched every previous entry in the franchise — if you are as devoted as they are, catching “Jigsaw” on the big screen is probably for you. B movie aficionados, horror movies junkies and stoners would have much more fun with this movie at home, on the couch.
So “Jigsaw” gets a begrudging pass. It’s not a good movie, it’s not for everybody, but there definitely is an audience out there for it that will enjoy it. It’s a direct-to-video quality movie trying to milk the success of its big screen predecessors, with the script and acting of the worst afternoon soap opera. But it should say something when watching a series eighth installment of terrible actors getting fake tortured for 90 minutes is more entertaining than sitting through two- and-half hours of “Transformers 5.”
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“Jigsaw” is currently playing at the Riverside Cinemas, 1017 S. Boone St. in Aberdeen.
George Haerle holds a bachelor’s degree in creative writing for media and lives in Cosmopolis.
