Jigsaw: Film Review

Jigsaw: Film Review

Cast: Callum Keith Rennie, Matt Passmore, Laura Vandervoort, Tobin Bell
Director: The Spierig Brothers

Seven years after the last outing for the slightly insane and warped logic of John Kramer, the Saw series returns with an attempt to dust off the legacy and restart the whole thing as we get asked to play a game again.

This time around, and once again treading familiar ground, Daybreakers and Predestination directors The Spierig Brothers bring their take to the grubby grimy series.

A group of apparently unconnected people, five in number, wake up inside a barn, with Ned Kelly-esque buckets on their head and chained to a wall. As the chains fire up, they're headed towards buzzsaws whirring violently away. Suddenly, the voice of John Kramer offers them a chance to redeem themselves....

Elsewhere with the discovery of the bodies, a group of detectives begin a quest to try and save them before it's too late.

With its truth will set you free ethos and its emphasis a little more on redemption, Jigsaw goes back to the series' roots in some ways, as the twisted games play out.

It's good to see that rather than simply concentrating on the torture porn, Jigsaw presents a course of logic that at least makes some sense to the reason why Jigsaw came to be - rather than simply imperil people for no real reason.

The problem is that due to lack of any reason to care about the five placed in danger and a distinct lack of tension makes Jigsaw difficult to invest in; the traps this time feel rote and lack a degree of deviousness that previous installments had going for them.

A lot of time is spent in a medical lab as well, giving this a feel of CSI: Saw rather than anything else. And despite a twist at the end (unsurprisingly), Jigsaw feels slightly redundant if it's trying to reboot the franchise and kick it all off again.

Ultimately, like most Jigsaws over time, this one is missing a few pieces, meaning that the final product feels unfinished and only hints at what could have been.