Jigsaw - 2017 - R

So it has been ages since I wrote a review of a movie, but after watching the 8th installment to the Saw franchise, I was compelled. Why? Because it was so close to being something good. So very close. If you're a fan, go ahead and give it a watch. It's not for the newb. Spoilers ahead cause I'm giving it all away.

This movie occurs ten years after John Kramer's (aka Jigsaw) death. It appears to follow a copycat killer who is dispatching victims in the same somewhat creative ways that jigsaw did years before, and they're trying to track him down. The central storyline is pretty standard in that the selectees of the game mostly yell at each other and ignore the very plain instructions despite the fact that they are shown to keep them alive. As a result, people generally die unnecessarily, but that's how these things go.

Where it goes into frustration-land is the ending. The ending of any story is the frame on which you hang all your hopes, and this was so freaking close to working. So close I could taste it. Dang, I'm mad about this one. The twist was perfect. It worked really, really well. I smiled.

This is your last chance. I'm about to spoil it all.

Consider yourself warned.

The twist was that the guy running the game in the present was one of the victims in the game we're actually watching throughout the film. You see, the core game we're watching was one of Jigsaw's first years ago, and those victims are long gone and deceased. The victims in the present are from a copycat of that original, although the guy in charge says that he only used three victims instead of five, and somehow they ended up in the same way. Don't think too hard about that cause it doesn't actually make sense unless he just outright killed them.

But then we get to the ending. The setup is magnificent. The guy running the show successfully framed the detective in charge, and he went to painstaking methods to do it. There is no way the guy is getting off. I mean, the detective is not a nice guy. We got a confession at the end. He deserves a comeuppance. Then, the movie ruins it.

Being framed for a bunch of murders would be a horrible way to go for a lawman, but instead of letting that punishment stand, the killer monologues him and us to death and then kills the detective anyway. Was it creative? Sure. Did the special effects team really want that in there? Clearly. Did it work? No. It completely ruined the entire framing plan. Why go to all that work and then not let it play out? Now instead of a framing, the detective is yet another victim and will die a martyr. Nothing bad will happen to him for his sins. He just dies which in this world is basically getting away with it.

All they had to do was let him live and wonder who was really behind it all. The movie could have told us who did it for the sake of the big reveal and twist, but left the character in the dark. If they had done that, the movie would have been elevated to diabolical.

What these writers need to understand is that torturing someone only works as long as they're alive. Once someone is dead, they're free. It would have been a great ending, but they screwed it up for the sake of a cool effect. Good job. Gruesome effects work, guys. Too bad the movie is now so mediocre that no one will care.