Jigsaw
2017
The Cast
Friday Night Is Fright Night so I was happy to see that two of the better fright films have new Chapters to their stories. Therefore, I was looking forward to watching both this movie and the new Horror chapter to Jeepers Creepers... How wrong I was.
Since they ended the SAW series on a high there was expectations for this movie to be good. The trailer was brilliant and atmospheric. I wanted to see this film, as I've always loved the concept I just thought most of the stories needed handling better, both story and film-wise. Though, as most cases prove nowadays, the trailer was much better than the movie.
I know it's a SAW film by a different name so there's gonna be gore... which there was but nowhere near that of the other movies. The things which let the film and story down was the direction and the writing. There were plot holes big enough to pilot an armada of cruise liners through. The main one being the detective work... there wasn't any. For some unfathomable reason, both cops on the case decided that the coroner, Logan (Passmore) and his assistant, Eleanor (Anderson), were the main suspects. I could understand Eleanor, a little, as she posted to a website based on John Kramer (Bell) and his killings. However, they totally ignored everybody else on the site. Ludacris. As for the cops themselves, it wasn't a case of good cop and bad cop but rather a bad cop and poser cop. At least Cle Bennett (Detective Keith Hunt) looked good in this movie - not for his acting skills, but for his dress sense - and boy can he pose like a supermodel!
Then there's the whole timeline thing. SAW has tried this scenario before and made a complete hash of it... and has once again. Though it's not as confusing as it's predecessor, there are still many oversights.
All this is a shame as they finally had the chance to make a decent movie from a good premise. At least they had a good cast. On the whole, the acting is above par and all the actors give the best performances they can - I can't fault them at all. It would have been nice to have more emotion, which the writers chose not to pursue even though they had a great character to do it with and a good actress to pull it off. I'm talking about Anna (Vandervoort). On the surface, her backstory is that of a woman who has lost her child to an accident. This opens up a myriad of possible emotional scenes. Then when the twist in her story is revealed it gives a chance for a different depiction. This would make the character relatable to the viewers; bringing them into the story a tad more. The same can be said for most of the characters, though you only need to expand on the main ones.
As for the gruesome special effects, they've been toned down for this film, which isn't a bad thing as they were starting to get too graphic (never thought I'd say that... but when you see a face get ripped off by a car tyre... well). However, there could, and should, have been more of the human claret flowing, especially in the leg scene.
This really could and should have been a better film. A statement that can nearly be said for the all the films in the series... so this suffers as the majority of the SAW films did. Therefore, I'd only recommend this to followers of the series. As for newbies, then I'd recommend watching the originals over this, at least, for a while, there's a feeling of freshness about them.
I give this insipid three-wheeler reboot a 5 out of 10.
No comments:
Post a Comment