Jigsaw marks a welcome change of pace for the Saw franchise. More importantly, thank God the tales of Hoffman are finally behind us. I know plenty of critics would argue there was never much value in any of the first seven Saw films, but it’s hard to deny the impact the original movie had when it arrived in 2004. If nothing else, it shocked audiences with one of the most memorable twist endings of its era. It also became the poster child for the crudely named “torture porn” subgenre, paving the way for films like Hostel and The Collector, movies more interested in pain, suffering, and gore than plot or characterization.
As a soft reboot, Jigsaw arrived after a lengthy break for the franchise, and I genuinely didn’t know what to expect. Granted, my own journey through the series involved watching all ten films in a little over a month thanks to Netflix carrying the entire collection with audio description. Unlike the first seven entries, which were made during a time when audio description was far less common and therefore much harder to find, Jigsaw benefits from modern accessibility standards and includes an excellent audio description track.
The formula remains largely unchanged. A group of strangers wake up trapped in a deadly game, forced to uncover why they’ve been chosen and whether any of them will survive. The Saw series has never exactly been known for letting its participants walk away unharmed, and Jigsaw follows that tradition faithfully.
The characters aren’t especially memorable, but that’s hardly unique to this installment. Outside of a handful of standouts throughout the franchise, most notably Cary Elwes in the original film and a couple of key players in Saw III, these movies have generally treated people as pieces on a game board rather than fully realized individuals. In that respect, Jigsaw is no worse than its predecessors, and arguably a little better.
One of the film’s smarter decisions is presenting its central game as something that predates much of what we’ve already seen. That allows Tobin Bell to return in a meaningful way, which is only a spoiler until you hear the familiar voice on the tapes and realize there’s really only one person it could be. Bringing John Kramer back to the forefront immediately gives the movie a stronger foundation than the Hoffman-centered sequels that dominated the latter half of the original run.
My biggest issue is that parts of the plot simply don’t hold up under scrutiny. I don’t expect high art from a Saw movie, but some of the trap logic here feels surprisingly shaky. One sequence involves a character accidentally entering a trap he was never meant to enter. Meanwhile, the other survivors become trapped elsewhere, and their only path to safety depends on this unintended participant sacrificing part of his body. The problem is that the trap he wandered into was supposed to teach him a lesson for stepping where he shouldn’t have stepped in the first place. If he had never triggered it, it’s difficult to understand how the rest of the game was supposed to progress. Since these are prerecorded instructions left behind by Kramer, it’s not as though someone is actively adjusting the rules in real time. The entire setup starts to unravel the moment you stop and think about it.
That’s ultimately where Jigsaw lands for me. Much like Saw III, it falls just short. It’s not bad, but it’s not good either. I can’t quite recommend it, even though it does a lot right. The story has holes, the characters are only moderately interesting, and the film never fully rises above the limitations of the franchise.
That said, I would take Jigsaw over Saw IV through Saw VII any day of the week. This is a significant improvement. The audio description is excellent, the characters are somewhat stronger, and I found myself far more engaged than I was during the Hoffman years. It doesn’t completely redeem the series, but it repairs a considerable amount of the damage done by four consecutive films built around Detective Hoffman and his relentlessly dreary brand of storytelling.
Should you see Jigsaw? Probably not. But if you’re already invested in the Saw franchise, this is at least evidence that the series was finally moving in the right direction. My review is still rotten, but for the first time in a while, the franchise showed signs of life.
Rotten: 5.8/10
