This was the first of these Saw movies that I got to watch in theaters. I was so excited. I knew that with every sequel the special effects just get bigger and badder to appease fans of the series who are out fir blood, and I heard this one gives it to them, so I was ready. The opening credits sequence gives us a closeup view of an autopsy, step by step as a body is cut open and examined, and it's gross and gooey, but I started to get worried that the special effects would become more important than the plot. that the filmmakers would become consumed with making the sequel bigger and badder than what came before, and that would come to take presidence over the plot, and that'snever a good thing. Sometimes "more" isn't better, it's just more. So how did the movie end up faring?
In this movie, Jigsaw is up to his old tricks again, capturing victims and placing them in elaborate traps that are designed to kill them if they don't figure out some puzzle and usually cause themselves serious physical harm in order to escape the traps and save their lives. In this movie a cop is once again the main character, but this cop is actually good at his job. A little too good, on fact. Most of his traps involve him having to be worse at his job in order to survive, which really isn't fair and I think it goes against Jigsaw's stated mantra that he sets these traps to make people choose to live despite painful obstacles, to make them enjoy and appreciate the lives they have been given. That's what made the last three films interesting to me, and what set this series apart from other gory movies.
There’s no doubt about it, this movie is indeed gory and grotesque. You really can't miss the gore here (it's the best part of the movie) but there's also some more details revealed about Jigsaw's origin, who he was before he became a killer, and why he turned to life as a homicidal maniac. We've heard his story before, but this movie delves even deeper into his backstop, to show us what motivates him and introduce us to people from his past, characters who helped shape him and lead him in the direction he went, the path of a killer. I think that's what a lot of people like about this movie, the origin story. I can appreciate that, but I got too distracted by what I DIDN'T like about the movie.
So what didn't I like? Well, like I said before, the guy who's going through Jigsaw's traps as the main character in this story is being targeted because he's too good at his job, and that goes against the whole rest of the lore built up around these movies, where Jigsaw is trying to make people appreciate life again after taking it for granted for too long. The cop from the second movie was a bad cop who used his position to ruin people'slives. Now we're punishing people for doing their jobs too well? Come on. And there might even be a reason why Jigsaw's traps have changed, as we find out at the end of this movie, but I still don't like it. it's like the ending to the third one, which I liked so much, backed this movie into a corner and forced it to take a path that led from a great movie to a huge pile of crap, and that pisses me off. Plus there's a main character in this movie who is played by an actor I can't stand, and he's in so much of the movie that I can't avoid him. Plus while all the movies have been gory (that's kind of their thing) the gore has always been central to the plot somehow, connected to whatever is happening in the movie. This is the first movie where the gore felt gratuitous, like it was just trying to "one up" the previous films in the series, like a little kid running around screaming "anything you can do I can do better." But it's not better, it's just more. Plus by this point I'm getting tired of the whole formula, with the long speech by Jigsaw at the end of the movie explaining everything. The guy's dead and he still won't shut up. Overall I just don't like this movie, and it pisses me off that I finally got to watch one of the Saw movies in theaters and it turns out to be this piece of crap. Poo.
No comments:
Post a Comment