by Aaron Schweitzer, Editor
With Spiral coming out this weekend, I figured now’s probably a great time for a rewatch of the Saw franchise. Warning: SPOILERS AHEAD for all Saw movies prior to Spiral. It’s also worth noting that on this rewatch, I watched the Unrated version of each film (except Jigsaw which doesn’t have one).
Before we begin, I want to acknowledge my history with the Saw franchise. I started watching when Saw II came out, but I still watched them in release order. I’ve probably seen each of them three or four times, but don’t think I’ve seen any since 2010 or so, right after the release of Saw: The Final Chapter (except of course, 2017’s Jigsaw which I saw opening weekend and haven’t seen since). The goal with the weekend binge is to watch either for the first time or with fresh eyes, and it was easy for me to do it the second way. It may have even let me see this franchise in a new light and since I knew all the story beats, it felt like a homecoming.
Let the game begin.
Saw
In a lot of ways, I think the first Saw film is a masterpiece. This franchise is at its best when it is able to focus in on individual scenarios and characters that you get to spend time with. You spend almost the whole runtime with Lawrence and Adam, so you understand who they are as people first, not their mistakes, as the rest of the franchise defines people only by their mistakes. I spent a lot of time thinking about the themes of each film, and this one is very straightforward: how far are you willing to go in order to survive? One of the things I’ve always admired about this franchise is that we have a horror movie that is not afraid to ask questions and places real people in scenarios with no supernatural elements. Honestly, the franchise could have stopped here and it would go down as a remarkable achievement. While nearly every answer is resolved, there is still enough of a mystery to make you want to keep exploring more about the Jigsaw killer. There are two glaring negatives in this movie — Leigh Whannell’s acting (which was done to keep budget as low as possible) and Lawrence’s family (I’m pretty sure they were only given one directive — cry literally the whole time). There’s a lot that’s amateur about this movie, but it was also made by a bunch of amateurs, so I’m willing to forgive it the same way I’ll forgive El Mariachi, Following, and Clerks.
Grade: A
Saw II
Now, let’s play a game of “I like a movie way more than you do!” While certainly not perfect, I really love Saw II. This film does exactly what it needs to do: expand on the world and philosophy introduced in the first film. I love the setup from Eric Matthews’ perspective and watching a well-intentioned but certainly not likable cop deal with his problems. The cherry on top is the twist that he just needed to be a good cop rather than resort to the dirty ways becoming his downfall. Add the backstory, understanding of the worldview of the Jigsaw killer, and why he thinks the way he does and you have all the stuff that I want in a movie like this. Oddly enough, for a series that revolves around creative traps, it is easily the weak part of this movie for me. While I love the setup of a dangerous escape room, the traps seem relatively easy. The subjects just make terrible decisions and you can’t help but look at them and scream, “WHY?! THERE WERE BETTER OPTIONS!” And the creativity in the traps is at an all-time low for the series, but it does have the needle pit scene which will make anyone uncomfortable for days. On top of that, none of the characters who are in the escape room are particularly interesting and some actors, particularly Shawnee Smith, are not very good. The focus of this movie isn’t really about the traps so, again, I’m not gonna give it too much flack for that. Again, this movie still has me on the hook for more.
Grade: A-
Saw III
That leads us to what I believe to be the most interesting movie of this franchise. While not the best film, in my opinion, I love the theme of Saw III, which revolves entirely around forgiveness. For the first time in this franchise, our main protagonist is in a metaphorical trap rather than a literal one; his task is to save people from traps who have been a part of a terrible injustice done against him. The movie really struggles with that and I admire it. The side plot involves a doctor whose job is to keep John alive or she dies too; it’s a cool plot, but there is not really a lesson there. It feels more like filler so we have a reason to spend time with John and a method to get where they want to end with this film. There is a lot of good stuff here, but several glaring problems. A primary problem is the character of Amanda and her portrayal by Shawnee Smith. The portrayal is better in this movie, but her character is intolerable (which is kind of the point). I do love how the movie chooses to take that character as a follower, but without any of the philosophy resembling Jigsaw, as Amanda tortures without a purpose. Another problem is that the protagonist has three main traps and each time he contemplates they get more personal, which makes it harder, but hinders character growth. Speaking of Jeff, he has one note — grief. Not knowing anything else about him makes him shallow and we kind of care less about him. Lastly, this movie really feels like two rolled into one, wrapping up Saw II with setting up Amanda as a “new Jigsaw” but also resolving her arc. Overall, if you’ve never seen these films, I’d say just watch these three and stop. There’s a cliffhanger, but honestly it’s still not a bad place to end, especially knowing what’s to come.
Grade: B+
Saw IV
Now we get to all of the things you’ve heard about this franchise. With the departure of Leigh Whannell as writer/co-writer after he filled that role on the first three films, Saw IV really scrambles while trying to find its footing. There are two things I like about this film — it is more backstory into John’s mind and a twist that reveals this was going on the same time as Saw III. Our main character Rigg is a nothing character and is not even involved with the traps, but more of an avenue for us to experience the traps though. His “lesson” is completely inconsistent with the philosophy of Jigsaw in the first three films. This movie is definitely where you can start to define this franchise as “torture porn” because really that’s all there is. Sure, the traps are creative, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I like seeing them. As I said, about the only bright spot in this film is more time finding out how John became Jigsaw and it’s all superfluous. This viewing, I was focused on theme since that had been a big reason why I like these movies, but this movie doesn’t have anything to say at all.
Grade: D+
Saw V
If you did not think it got any worse than Saw IV, well then, let me just tell you about a little film called Saw V. This is by far the worst film in the franchise and really has nothing working for it. There are two separate movies going on here: the first is a group in a trap and the second is showing how Hoffman became the new Jigsaw with Special Agent Strahm putting together the pieces, only to be framed in the end. The characters in the trap are completely uninteresting and the traps itself are, again, straight up torture porn. What’s even worse is the group trap has absolutely no bearing on anything in the universe at large; there’s no personal connection. While I am absolutely interested in how Jigsaw could turn a cop into a protégé, this movie completely fumbles it. The Agent Strahm thing feels like it might work well if that were its own movie, but as it stands and with the cast and screenplay given, it’s a big flop. The only positive I can give this movie is the message of the traps. It’s that a bunch of selfish people working as a group does not work, it takes people being selfless to make a group truly a group. I truly believe a lot of people probably gave up after this movie and I don’t blame them at all.
Grade: F
Saw VI
It’s a shame for those who did give up because I really think there’s something special about Saw VI. It is kind of incredible that the sixth film of a horror franchise could do something really cool, but I think this one does lots of cool things! Sure, it’s not a perfect movie and let’s start there this time. There are two main storylines in this one: an insurance agent going through a series of traps and side setup for the “grand” finale. There are three main negatives I have with this movie. First and foremost is that Hoffman is such an uninteresting character to me. He long overstayed his welcome and I don’t care about him or his role in this film. Big problem number two is that this film is 80% flashbacks with about half of those flashbacks being scenes we have seen in previous films. And lastly, while I really like how the insurance agent going through the traps displays how the healthcare system is broken, it does not necessarily follow the philosophy setup in the first few movies and feels really disconnected with Jigsaw’s ultimate plan. I’m not sure what it actually is. I’m not sure the movies even do. That leads us to the positives, which pretty much all revolve around the series of traps. We see a character make choices that ultimately determine others’ fates and it plays into the theme, which is that you cannot make life and death decisions based only on one aspect of someone’s life or even based on paper. This film does a great job at showing the value of human life and we see this character rediscover how to care for people. It all leads to an ending that is tragic, twisted, and really poetic. The other highlight about this film is that there feels to be a sense of finality. These films relied on, and even thrived on, the ending that left you wanting more. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it really did not. Saw IV and V tried to juggle so much that it felt kind of overwhelming, so it’s a relief that there are very few hanging threads left so this franchise can, hopefully, end well.
Grade: C+
Saw: The Final Chapter
After a semi-promising Saw VI leading to a potentially epic conclusion, we get the truly awful Saw: The Final Chapter (or Saw 3D). This is the film that changed in my ranking most because I remember really liking it when it came out, but boy, oh boy did I hate this movie upon a rewatch. I really like the last few minutes; a certain reveal of a character coming back is great, but that’s about all there is to like about this movie. My three main issues are the new characters, it being a nonsensical gore-fest, and a complete lack of philosophy. Let’s start in that order. There are several new characters introduced, including our trap victim, but more primarily two new detectives we’re supposed to root for. For a franchise that did a good job of carrying characters over, it feels weird for half the cast to be new, especially knowing this is the (at the time) end of the saga. While I don’t care about the detectives, there’s a particularly bad performance in Detective Gibson. The second huge fault is the nonsensical gore-fest. I hesitated to label this franchise as “torture porn” for the last 10 years and, while it is nothing to the scale of Eli Roth’s films, you cannot argue that IV, V, and 3D are anything but that. There are so many traps and many of them occur as flashbacks, dream sequences, or completely not connected to anything else. It truly feels like they had a book of different trap ideas throughout the first six films and knew The Final Chapter would be the last, so they decided to use them all. On top of all of that, there is a complete lack of philosophy. The meaning for all of the victims are barely thrown together and shallow, Hoffman is a straight up murderer for most of this movie, which is directly in contrast to everything set up in the first three films, and the traps really serve no purpose other than to see people in pain and eventually die. The biggest flaw in this franchise is the idea that the producers think we need to see every trap work because we came for the gore. The philosophy of the franchise (or at least attempted philosophy) is one of the things that I had always admired and this movie throws out everything that was built up. In hindsight, even though I love the last five minutes, I’m personally grateful the franchise doesn’t go out like this. But, hey, I could wind up hating Jigsaw or Spiral too.
Grade: D-
Jigsaw
For our last movie of the article, we turn to a soft reboot of the franchise, Jigsaw. It takes place in the timeline, but gives us an entirely new cast and is set years after the original seven installments. Honestly, it’s kind of a breath of fresh air. Let’s start with the things to love, shall we? My favorite thing about this movie is that while it is not entirely from the police’s perspective, this is definitely more of a detective story than any of the other films. It is clear to me that this is the best way to do this story unless it is more contained and features a setting like the first one. I really hope Spiral keeps this in mind and makes it more of a detective story where our only perspective is from the detectives and we can get flashbacks (like Boondock Saints) to visualize the traps as they are investigating. Another thing to love is the whodunnit feel, which has been missing since the original (and arguably Saw IV). Sure, we know that John has been and is still dead, but with everyone else dead as well, there really only seems to be two options: the surprise appearance in Saw 3D is continuing Jigsaw’s work or it has to be a new copycat or apprentice. So the aspect of trying to make us think John is still alive really doesn’t work here. The last positive I have about this movie is the twists it takes that really catch you off guard if you’ve forgotten most of this movie. But I probably love this movie more in theory and execution (it’s by far the best looking of the franchise) rather than in actuality. My two main gripes with this film are the complete abandonment of previous philosophy and some timeline issues with some new revelations. On the philosophical side, I’m willing to forgive most of it because while this film is still bad people being punished, it is also a “New Jigsaw” and definitely a new era. I don’t feel tied down to the established principles of the first film, even though there is a character moment in the ending that makes me question my own judgment on that. I can’t really find a theme to this movie other than vengeance being an avenue for justice when the law comes short (which is a whole other conversation). I cannot as easily forgive the timeline issues. There are choices in this film that affect the Saw timeline even before the first film and I think the movie intends to fill in the blanks, but as it stands, it has just come to the point where adding to beginning of the timeline is beyond ridiculous. I’ve been told that Spiral is not in any way a continuation of this film (but that person could just be saving a twist for me to experience myself) and that is a shame to me. Sure, I want entertaining and compelling stories, but I also want to see this story continue and give me answers. I just don’t think I’m down for six more movies in this narrative.
Grade: B-
My ranking of the franchise is: Saw, Saw II, Saw III, Jigsaw, Saw VI, Saw IV, Saw:The Final Chapter, and lastly Saw V.
I’m really excited to see Spiral soon, so be sure to check out Siftpop Writers’ Room (available wherever podcasts are sold) this week to hear my thoughts on it!
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