This movie had some awesome posters. Just look at them! Of course, they all say this is the final chapter, the last Saw movie, and I think I knew back then even that this wasn't true. The thing is, the filmmakers had a chance after part 2 to split the movie off and have different Jigsaw traps in different places possibly run by other Jigsaw apprentices, but they chose to stick with the main story and keep piling more twists on top of it. Like I said before, I like Saw 3 and the direction it chose to take, but I knew that if they stuck with this storyline instead of splitting off, eventually the plot would pile up until it collapsed on itself under the weight. I used to work in a pizza place, and we would make whatever pizza people ordered, however we had a warning on the website, because pizzas cook best with at most 4 toppings besides cheese. You can pile more crap on top if you want, but you're running the risk that the pizza won't cook right and will fall apart or be raw and yucky in the middle. This series had fun piling all the twists and crap on top of each other, but the result for me was a half-baked sequel that didn't live up to the hype it created for itself.
So in this movie, yet more twists are revealed about who will be in charge of the Jigsaw legacy now that he's dead. The movie opens with one of Jigsaw's bloody traps, maybe the gorriest, nastiest death of the series. We meet a support group for Jigsaw's surviving victims, who gather to talk about their torturous experiences (which is kind of a nice touch, and we get to see some memorable survivirs from the rest of the films, as well as a few we might not have known were survivirs). We learn what happens after the explosive twist at the end of the sixth film, and whether some will escape judgement for their sins or be caught in Jigsaw's elaborate web and finally get what they deserve.
The opening sequence is really disgusting. Like, ew. And I love how the death takes place in front of a captive audience, mimicking the audience who have watched the deaths in the previous 6 movies. It's got a nasty, mean-spirited little twist too, which is rude, but still kind of cool. It's also kind of cool how the movie started with a saw, and it ends with a saw (well, the beginning of the end anyway). We also get to see someone stitching their own face up. Back before I had health insurance, I sewed up a gash on my arm once and felt like Rambo, but I never stitched my own face. Good LORD. It definitely shows how messed up that character is, though, so kudos, movie.
There are more traps in this movie than I remember there being from the other movies. Maybe the filmmakers realized that was the best thing about the movies, so they just ran with it. I actually don't know if there are more traps, but it feels like there are more because the traps in this movie are definitely bigger and more explosive than in previous movies. People get torn limb from limb, crushed by cars, and there's one nasty death involving super glue and tearing skin. Once I accidentally super glued my thumb to my hand, and tried to peel them apart, and ended up ripping a big tear in my skin. It's not as elaborate as what happened in this movie, but it makes me cringe even harder at the trap in this movie. Icky relateable skin ripping death for the win!
Dude, the cop in this movie, Gibson, is the most annoying character throughout the whole series, and that's saying something. I spent every one of his scenes wishing I could stab him in the face so I could enjoy the rest of the movie. He's smug, arrogant, immature, and loud. Ugh. Chad Donella is the actor who plays the character, and I can't decide if he's brilliant or ridiculous. Sean Patrick Flannery plays the main character, Bobby, another survivor of one of Jigsaw's games, and he also does a good job of making me want to punch him in the face and throw him off a bridge. He does the single stupidest thing any character has done throughout the course of these seven films, and that's an achievement. Seriously, he's ridiculous. I can't tell you why, but trust me, his smarmy ass deserves everything he gets.
So a few years ago, I had my wisdom teeth removed, and they were growing in sideways, so the doctor had to saw them out of me skull, and I was awake for the whole procedure, totally numb but awake and squeezing my eyes closed so I didn't have to watch blood shooting out of my mouth and having it squirt in my eye or something. Most people have at least some fear of the dentist, and I have a little more than my fair share thanks to my dental nightmare. Horror movies like to tap into this fear and sometimes use dental torture as a way to freak people out, and this movie takes that route with a particularly brutal dental torture scene that honestly turned my stomach a little, so good job, movie.
The end feels like watching a top spin over and over again, and I know the filmmakers are trying to wrap everything up and throw a bunch of twists at us, but I kinda got bored and wished they'd just get on with it already. I know I bitched about it already, but it all just feels so cheap and tacked-on that I wanted to roll my eyes into the next century. There's a big old bloody death to distract me, but that still didn't make up for watching them run a great idea into the ground like this. You remember that old kid's song "this is the song that never ends, it just goes on and on my friends. Some people started singing it not knowing what it was, and they'll continue singing it forever just because this is the song that never ends..." and on and on and so forth, and it just gets more annoying the more they sing it? That's this movie for me. Some good scenes and good ideas, but too much bullshit to dig through to make it worth the effort.
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