[Review] Jigsaw

I don't know if anyone was asking for another Saw film, but a new one has been dumped on us whether we like it or not. The only good thing I can say about Jigsaw is that it's short. But even though it clocks in at just 80 minutes, it's still 80 minutes too long.

Basically the same setup as the others -- a group of strangers trapped in a warehouse are forced to endure and escape a series of tortuous "games". As the victims pop up in grisly scenes around town, law enforcement identifies the killings as the work of the infamous John Kramer. But it can't be, can it? He's been dead for 10 years! The film repeats this in case you didn't get it the first time.

Jigsaw never adds any fresh pieces to the already tattered franchise. It's aggressively more of the same, and it's loathsomely repetitive and void of surprises or shock. Any sense of intensity is dwindled to a shrug. You could probably garner more satisfaction from a "Criminal Minds" episode. And despite all the sharp objects and needles, the story feels more pointless than ever. The face-grinder, throat-choker, and laser contraption setpieces might give hardcore fans a brief rush, but I think most filmgoers are either desensitized to or just plain sick of this sort of thing. And a problem that plagues this series is that there's no reason to really give a damn about these characters. Some of the decisions they make are so stupid that they probably deserve to die a brutal death.

Jigsaw is like an actual jigsaw puzzle - in that once you've done it once, you're probably a lot less compelled to want to do it again.

( 4/10 )

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