JIGSAW. (2017) DIRECTED BY THE SPIERIG BROTHERS. BASED ON 'SAW' AND CHARACTERS CREATED BY JAMES WAN AND LEIGH WHANNELL.
STARRING TOBIN BELL, MATT PASSMORE, HANNAH EMILY ANDERSON, CALLUM KEITH RENNIE, PAUL BRAUNSTEIN, MANDELA VAN PEEBLES, BRITTANY ALLEN AND LAURA VANDERVOORT.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
I'd better come clean straightaway and admit that I don't dig the SAW films, even though they're the phenomenally successful brainchild of horror wunderkinder James Wan and Leigh Whannell. Yeah, you know those guys!
They could scribble down the bones of an idea for a horror film while sitting on the can and, by tea-time, it'd be the first film in a bazillion-selling series of horror flicks. Yeah, those guys can do no wrong. I've no quarrel with them. They're rich enough to have me killed anyway, lol. I'm not gonna badmouth those guys!
But I still don't like the SAW films. Frequently described as 'torture porn,' a label the two lads apparently dislike, they're just not my cup of tea and that's fine. Everyone knows I tend to prefer atmospheric old horror movies with haunted houses, loads of fog and a locked room at the top of the house where Mother sleeps, but she won't be any trouble at all and you won't even see her so you might as well just go ahead and rent the house for the summer and, when we return in the Fall, you totally won't have been killed by the house which, did we forget to mention, needs to suck the life out of unsuspecting human beings in order to survive... Oh, we forgot to mention that, did we? Well, you'll be dead anyway so tough shit, lol. That's my kind of film. I love a good old possession movie too.
That's not to say, however, that millions of people didn't watch and love the first few SAW films, which fans say are some of the best horror films ever made. There's a lot of love for the first film, in particular, the one which starred Cary Elwes in a locked room with a tape cassette and a little hacksaw which he was meant to use to hack off his own feet. I saw that film, excuse the pun, and even though I still personally hated it, I could see why other people liked it.
The films revolve around a man with terminal brain cancer called John Kramer, a man known to the police as 'the Jigsaw Killer,' who teaches his victims a healthy respect for life and living by trapping them in horrific life-or-death situations and seeing what they'll do. He lights the blue touch-paper and then stands well back...
I can see why this might work for a bit but JIGSAW is, like, the sixty-seventh film in the franchise and, excuse me for saying this, but I think the idea is a bit shop-soiled by now. Tired, worn out, played-out, all washed-up, finito. Eeek, is that the sound of angry SAW fans breaking down my front door? Well, good, because I'm in the mood to play a little game, my pretties. Are you...?
JIGSAW has no heart, no soul. It's as cold and clinical and baffling as an episode of some one-hour rubbish forensic drama on one of those television channels I refuse point-blank to shell out for. I was bored to death while watching it because the characters were so awful and I didn't know them or identify with them or care what happened to them in the slightest.
A quintet of really unpleasant people wake up trapped in a room somewhere. Yeah yeah. Getting free from the room and the traps it contains will involve confessing their sins, which are lame and piddly compared to the grim circumstances in which they currently find themselves. Except for the woman who shifted the blame for killing her baby onto her husband. That was nasty. She nasty. But she can think on her feet, I'll give her that.
Anyway, there's a detective called Halloran who's on the case, a forensic pathologist called Logan Nelson and his assistant, a madwoman called Eleanor who's a JIGSAW fangirl, if you can believe that. She's so into the crimes of the late John Kramer that she's built an exact replica of his gruesome torture chamber in a premises somewhere. By herself. Wiv 'er own lily-white hands. You find this believable? I did not. Not in the slightest. I'm afraid the acting is a bit below-par also, not looking at anyone in particular, tsk tsk.
The detective and the two pathologists are all suspicious of each other and are pointing fingers willy-nilly at each other. Meanwhile, the five people we don't really give a shit about are trying to- yawn- escape from the- yawn again- torture room and there's also some suggestion that the deceased serial killer John Kramer has come back from the dead.
As Tobin Bell is in the credits, I'd say there's every chance that this is true. Or is he merely a memory, a flashback, a faint shadow of his former self...? You'll have to wait and see, dear reader. I'm off now to change my identity and disappear into the general population so that the creators of SAW can't ever find me and lock me up in one of their torture rooms for slagging off this film. Mind you, I could probably escape no bother. After all, we've all seen the films...
THE GAME CONTINUES ON DIGITAL DOWNLOAD 19TH FEBRUARY 2018 AND ON DVD, BLU-RAY, 4K, UV, STEELBOOK AND BOX-SET 26TH FEBRUARY. (LIONSGATE)
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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