I don’t immediately want to kick off a review with a spoiler, but thank God, it’s over.
I mean, it’s not, because they made three more after this, but Saw: The Final Chapter finally decided it was time to jettison Hoffman from the franchise, something they toyed with in the previous film and sadly chickened out on. So in the final installment of what had basically become Saw: Hoffman Boogaloo, we get our least interesting Jigsaw targeting Jill for revenge.
Not that this series has ever cared much about anyone’s fate, or saving the good ones, but considering Jill actually tried to right a wrong in the previous film, it’s genuinely frustrating that the franchise chooses Hoffman over her. He isn’t even the original Jigsaw, and somehow he ended up with more films than John Kramer. Then, just to add insult to injury, the movie completely disrespects Jill by the time the credits roll.
I’m sure plenty of fans thought the ending was cool. The return of past survivors gives the film a sense of celebration, and bringing Cary Elwes back was probably a welcome surprise for longtime viewers. But the ending is stupid. It ignores the near full-circle moment Jill’s story had been building toward and instead doubles down on everything that made this era of Saw so exhausting in the first place.
The frustrating thing is that the grade doesn’t even reflect how much I disliked this movie. The score mostly acknowledges that there is still a certain amount of craft on display. The traps are inventive enough, the gore is plentiful, and from a pure horror standpoint it clears the bare minimum threshold of being not too shitty, but just shitty enough.
By this point, I feel like I’ve completely disassociated from Saw IV through Saw 3D. If I were ever revisiting the franchise, I’d jump straight from Saw III to Jigsaw without a second thought. I couldn’t be less enthused by this stretch of films if I tried, even when the series is finally putting a nail in the coffin of Costas Mandylor’s generic, dull, uncharismatic detective-gone-bad.
In some ways, I’m glad the franchise eventually came back years later with fresh eyes and at least a few new ideas. The three films that followed are all considerably better than this. Saw: The Final Chapter feels like a culmination of everything wrong with the franchise, and the worst part is that it seems completely unaware of how badly it has lost the plot.
The audio description, the last one produced by Descriptive Video Works for the series, does a solid job capturing all the grisly details horror fans show up for. But I need more than body parts. I’m looking for something that reaches my heart while it’s still inside of me.
Saw: The Final Chapter is a prayer finally answered, putting a stake through a version of the franchise that stopped working somewhere around Saw IV. Unfortunately, it had to drag us through three more movies before finally snapping that reverse bear trap on itself.
Rotten: 3.1/10
