The hype that surrounded Saw VII because it was supposedly the "final chapter" of the Saw franchise was all a huge lie. Saw VII made $136.2 million dollars, so of course there was going to be another movie in the series. unfortunately for the filmmakers, the backstory had twisted and wound itself into oblivion by this point, and they wanted to go in a new direction, to inject some fresh life into the old formula. But the seventh movie had sort of backed them into a corner, and they had to find a way out. What to do? I'll tell you what they did: they backpedaled, abandoned most of the hooey about Jigsaw's "legacy" and took the series off in a different direction. Something one could argue that they should have done before the backstory became so convoluted it was practically beyond help. So whatof this new direction, was it successful?
In this movie, six new victims wake to find themselves caught in Jigsaw's trap. As with previous films, the victims must work together to figure out how to save themselves before it's too late (and as with previous films, a lot of them don't listen and wind up meeting a grisly fate. When will people ever learn? In this movie, the cops and people from the coroner's office are searching desperately for Jigsaw and also freaking out, because John Kramer has been dead for ten years by this time abd he shouldn'tbe able to keep killing people, dammit! As the movie goes on, time starts running out for our victims, and the cops become more and more despondent as their efforts to find the killer keep leading nowhere. Who is behind these new murders? Is Jigsaw really dead? Will the killing ever end?
Jigsaw sure keeps himself busy after his untimely death. It's like L. Ron Hubbard releasing books year after year even though he's dead. And the victims are in the same kind of boat the previous victims were in, having to confess their sins and sacrifice something that hurts them and causes them pain. They do eventually start to figure out what they have to do sooner than the peoplein previous movies, which leads one of the victims to say: "Cut yourself! He wants blood, and then you're free!" Yeah, it's always a blood sacrifice, isn't it? And what's up with a dead serial killer still causing so many gruesome deaths? That's what I would want to know, and it's something the characters in this movie are wondering too. One of the doctors doing the autopsy of the first victim in the movie comments that someone has been studying up on John Kramer. Jigsaw's metaphorical fingerprints are all over this new murder, even though he's been dead for ten years now, and that's really frustrating.
As I believe I've said before, part 2 of this series seemed to be indicating that the series was going to go in a different direction, possibly with another character each movie carrying on Jigsaw's games, but then the third movie happened and everything went south because that movie practically ensured the series had to continue in a certain direction, and that direction slowly killed the series. This movie tries to backtrack and do what they should have done way earlier, and that always pissed me off about this movie, because I thought it was too late for them to go this route and they were going to be re-writing history.
I don't know if it's just because I'm so tired I'm delirious, but I didn't mind all of that so much this time around watching the movie. I was more able to forget the past and enjoy this movie for what it is, a nasty little throwback to the simpler times of the first two movies. And it really is a throwback, they even take their cues from the first two movies and instead of opening with a huge, gory spectacle that has to get bigger and badder with every movie like some kind of competition, this movie has a quieter opening with less gore and doesn't really start drenching the screen with blood until later on in the movie (but fear not, there IS some great gore, and it's so disgusting it made my friend change the channel when this scene came on cable one day). So i guess my verdict now is that this sequel (requel?) isn't too bad after all. Bring on the sequels that use different killers every time, if you want. I'm ready.
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