JIGSAW (dir. The Spierig Brothers)

It’s doubtful that when James Wan’s original SAW film premiered at Sundance back in 2004, he envisaged it to be the beginning of hugely successful horror franchise, which propelled it’s titular villain “The Jigsaw” into horror folk-lore and spawned 7 sequels between 2004 and 2010. A well-directed and original horror film though it might have been, it was far from the usual horror fodder that usually bores the life out of life-long horror fans alike. It’s simple concept, in which two men wake up, chained by the feet to a radiator, as their masked puppet-faced captor gives them a chance at freedom at the expense of cutting of their feet, kept us guessing and appalled with delightful twists and old-school direction.

But the obvious reasons behind it’s continued success were clearly financial and far from artistic - it would appear you only need use the name SAW, add the next number in sequence and release it at halloween and you’ve made a profitable horror film. A mere $1.5 million dollar budget behind the original film, it made 100 times that much worldwide, and the following sequels, albeit lacking in the nuance edge of the first film, followed suit with equally positive contributions for Lionsgate with a worldwide gross of all seven films nearing a billion dollars.

A seventh film ended the franchise, or so we thought, back in 2010 with a shallow and unwatchable 3D incarnation with attempted to tie up all of the plot holes and narrative inconsistent’s laid bare from the last 6 sequels. It’s clear though that horror audiences weren’t flocking to find out the latest plot twist in the saw franchise, but to witness the pre-mediated torture sequences which were always more interested in gross-out torture porn than psychological horror.

It apparently ended the story of the Jigsaw killer, John Kramer (Tobin Bell) and his accomplices. But money talks more in horror cinema than originality will ever do, so back in 2012 there were talks of an eight film in the franchise. Though it took 5 years and bared a different name upon it’s birth (originally titles Saw:Legacy), Jigsaw finds it’s way to cinemas with a larger budget and fresh and inventive new directors. If the sequels could be congratulated on anything, it was there attention to the torture porn sequences at the expense of narrative. Though an array of different directors eventually helmed a SAW sequel, from Darren Lynn Bousman, David Hackl, and Kevin Greutert, they failed miserably at creating something as diverse and memorable as the original.

Our 2017 incarnation brings new mysteries to the franchise; ten years have passed since The Jigsaw Killer’s supposed death, yet bodies have been turning up all over town. As we always know, in horror cinema nothing ever really stays dead and we should never take character arcs seriously. Rumors start spreading that Kramer must still be alive, as the killings bear the same jigsaw-style flesh cut than the other killings. Detectives Halloran and Hunt (Callum Keith Rennie and Clé Bennett) race around town trying to make sense of the murders - add into the mix traumatic war veteran turned pathologist Logan Nelson (Matt Passmore) and intern Laura Vandervoort (Anna), they make up the always overdone contextual side of the Saw series that are more confusing than intriguing.

But our main drama pits unlucky individuals thrusted into torture sequences for our delight; in the case of the unbearable sequels, you never cared about the characters, even though there were ham-fisted attempts to make them appear to be anything from innocent victims. In the case of this, Ryan (Paul Braunstein), Mitch (Mandela Van Peebles), Carly (Brittany Allen) and Edgar (Josiah Black) awake to be the next victims of the psychopathic killer’s moral games and for this particular entry, our infamous torture set-pieces are executed with a certain amount of flair. A sequence in a barn, which shouldn’t be spoiled for maximum effect, is nasty in the good way you want horror cinema to put you through.

From the saga’s new directors “The Spierig Brothers”, whose previous films “Predestination” and Daybreakers dealt subtly with the notion of man vs evil. There was always pleasure in seeing the sheer nastiness of the tortutre set-pieces, but after a while they became anodyne as you cared less for the characters than you did for the mind-numbing stupidity of the drama. But here, though the drama shifts its intrigue from character to character in the vain of your classic episode of Scooby-Doo, there’s enough here to remind you that there can be a successful entry to the series, if you pay attention to the characters and not on over complicating the narrative.

Rating 3/5