Review of Jigsaw (2017) by Shawn-Thomas F — 15 Nov 2017

*Spoiler Warning*.

As a huge fan of the saw movies I felt severely let down by this movie. As Jigsaw is so highly advertised, you expect him to be the mastermind and back completely but expect disappointment. The other movies had trapped characters who had actual personalities that make you want them to live, plot twists they hadn't used before, returning characters from previous movies that you didn't expect and a continuing plot. This movie reused the plot from two previous Saw movies... Jigsaw's apprentice being the mastermind the whole time (Saw IV, Saw VI and Saw VII) and also what was shown to us and everyone had already happened (Saw II)..

This was the movie to wrap everything up but had the worst twist out of them all, which hit harder due to the hype I felt believing Jigsaw would be back. One of the main issues I had with this movie is that it was advertised and presented to us to have Jigsaw be the one behind the recent crimes but it wasn't even a returning character like Saw II and Saw VII had.. It was someone who meant nothing to us loyal fans and feels like a slap in the face as the actor of Jigsaw/John Kramer (Tobin Bell) was actually there in the movie so it's not like they couldn't bring him back. Now obviously we saw him die so it would have been difficult to explain him still being alive but they teased us so many times with his return and as this is the supposed official finale advertised with Jigsaw we'd expect an amazing reason, an amazing twist to explain this. We see Jigsaw alive with dialog from another character indicating confusion as to why he is but later on we just get a twist that this part of the movie was set in the past.. I'd have rather been given a movie set at a point where he was alive rather than someone new with no charisma.

The actual "game" itself.. felt so uncared for with characters so boring and similar. Yes, there are characters we are supposed to hate but not 4/5 of them and the only likable one dies in the middle of the movie. This is supposed to be the main thing in the Saw movies and to have it as not only end up as a side-plot, but to feel so unenjoyable is very disappointing.

One scene in particular that didn't make sense either is that a girl needed to take only 1 of 3 injections with 1 being an antidote to poison inside her another being harmless and another being acid but she refused so another "player" injects her with all 3.. ensuring her instant death which didn't make sense because he just needed to use 1 and she would had a possibility of surviving or just not being harmed at that moment. She also knew the answer of which needle it was the antidote the whole time.