RECENT WATCHES: Jigsaw (2017)

Never trust a final chapter, ya dummy. Many times over the decades, producers have tried to goose the falling box office numbers of a long-running horror series by promising this is the last one. As soon as 2011, only a year after "Saw 3D" was advertised as the end of the story, Lionsgate was already discussing doing another one. Eventually, a pitch from Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger convinced the studio to revive the series after six short years. Deciding the talent behind "The Hungover Games" and "Good Luck Chuck" was not cut-out to relaunch their star horror series, the Spierig Brothers would get the directing job. That's the Australian duo behind "Undead" and "Daybreakers," who had an indie hit with "Predestination" the year before. The brothers promised that "Jigsaw" – a better title than the initially considered "Saw Legacy" – would be a "Saw for 2017." What they meant by that can only be guessed at but "Jigsaw" is notable for being the only entry in the series to receive an R-rating from the MPAA without any further cuts. I guess the start of the Trump years left us all thoroughly desensitized, bloody games of torture and self-mutilation no longer phasing the moral guardians. "Paranormal Activity" had also burnt itself out by this point, meaning Lionsgate was able to grab the traditional Halloween weekend release date for "Jigsaw," providing some certainty in an uncertain world. 

Ten years have passed since the death of John Kramer, the twisted avenger known as the Jigsaw Killer. A criminal in a speeding vehicle is caught by police holding a remote trigger, claiming "the game" is beginning again. This is when Detectives Halloran and Hunt begin to discover bizarrely mutilated bodies, each one wearing a bucket-like helmet. They conclude that a Jigsaw copycat is continuing Kramer's plan. In an isolated location, five individuals have awoken in a barn outfitted with deadly traps, forced to play through each one by the familiar puppet avatar and to confess their sins as they try to survive the ironic punishments. Halloran and Hunt team with pathologist Logan and Eleanor, the latter a part of the obsessive Jigsaw online fan base, to try and stop the games before more bodies pile up and find out the truth about who is continuing Jigsaw's legacy. 

Whether "Jigsaw" can said to successfully reinvent the long-running franchise for the mid-2010s is debatable. However, the Spierig Brothers do ditch the aesthetics of the earlier films. The nu-metal visuals of Slimer green lighting, filthy industrial equipment, grungy locations, and obnoxiously "extreme" editing have been left behind. "Jigsaw" is mostly set out in a barn, with lots of hay and a key scene in a grain silo, exchanging the traditionally urban settings of these movies for a more rural location. Cinematographer Ben Nott mostly keeps to a brightly lit and widescreen look, that thrusts bladed instruments and swinging body parts right into the camera. (Weirdly, the sequel was not released in 3D, despite this.) However, the scenes of cops and detectives following clues and trying to stop Jigsaw's twisted game are fairly flatly presented. The question of what is "Saw" without the stylized, in-your-face edginess of the early 2000s is answered by "Jigsaw" mostly looking like a network television show. The gruesome post-mortem examinations of mutilated bodies aren't that much more graphic than what you'd see on any "CSI" spin-off, showing that the culture had truly caught up with "Saw's" extremity by 2017. 

It is weird seeing Billy the Puppet in such brightly lit environments, without the jittery camera work. Otherwise, "Jigsaw" doesn't feel that different from the previous entries in the series. By the end of "Saw 3D," the series had become a continuity-heavy soap opera about the competing apprentices of John Kramer, the various detectives and victims of the twisted gamemaster. "Jigsaw" has a mostly new cast of characters, new cops and coroners on the killer's trail and new bickering captives of Jigsaw's masterplan. The characters are familiar, however, with Halloran as the dirty cop and Ryan as the belligerent asshole pushing through the game. A compelling protagonist never emerges, which makes the scenes devoted to moving the plot forward tedious. A moment when Logan talks about details of the case with his obsessive Jigsaw fangirl sister feel utterly route and tedious. The idea of an online fandom of Jigsaw devotees is an interesting idea but the sequel never makes any of its generic characters or investigation feel all that novel or fleshed-out. 

That reveals a depressing truth about "Saw" as a franchise. John Kramer and his network of disciples had basically emerged as the protagonists of the later sequels. The people navigating the elaborate murder devices were interchangeable, often unimportant victims to watch get brutalized. The gory traps are ostensibly the stars of these movies anyway, right? Probably out of a desire to shed the franchise's reputation as mindless torture-fests, "Jigsaw" reels back on the graphic violence. There's a fairly gnarly shot of a leg sliced off in a wire snare but most of the scenarios are more psychological. The focus is on the moral dilemmas the characters must make, forced to choose between spilling their own blood and watching someone else die. However, the people trapped in the barn range from vaguely defined to deeply unlikeable. As always, there are twisted moral justification for each game, all of them being responsible for some "sin." That makes it harder to root for anyone to survive. When that is combined with the less elaborate and gruesome devices, the result leans more towards tedium than thrills. The Spierigs seem to lack the sadistic eyes of previous "Saw" directors. Some of the scenarios here – a duo trapped in a slowly filling grain silo as bladed instruments fall from above – show the sick creativity we've cone to expect. However, someone being lowered into a spinning spiral of blades or tightening chains lack the visceral presentation of past films. "Jigsaw" doesn't want to be mindless gore and sadism but it doesn't offer us much else either, sure to leave the Fangoria crowd deeply underwhelmed. 

Of course, convoluted on-going storylines and elaborately gruesome violence are only the main things "Saw" has offered fans over the years. The series is also known, I guess, for its twist endings. Horror villains like Jason, Chucky, and Michael Myers have all returned from the grave multiple times. "Saw" is ostensibly more grounded than those series. Flashbacks and absurd planning ahead has kept Tobin Bell as John Kramer in these movies, despite the character technically being dead since part three. "Jigsaw" teases throughout the possibility that Kramer has somehow returned from the grave, his terminal cancer diagnosis somehow not being so permanent. The sequel clearly knows fans are expecting the character to return. When Bell appears on-screen again, as solemn and grim and compelling as ever, it would seem "Saw" has finally crossed that improbable bridge. Stolberg and Goldfinger's script, however, has one genuinely clever ace up its sleeve. Trying to decipher the moral code of the killer remains as nonsensical as ever. However, I will give the eighth installment points for catching me off-guard and finding a way to bring Jigsaw back that doesn't involve contrivances like resurrections from the grave, identical siblings, time travel, or undoing the importance of being near-death to Kramer's motivation. 

That clever last minute twist – which should not be thought about too hard in the context of previous movies, of course – at least takes "Jigsaw" out on a memorable note. The sequel should also be commended for building on the A.C.A.B. subtext of the previous entries. It seems wrong to root for the sadistic toymaker and his twisted games of death but he still seems to have a stronger sense of justice than the fucking cops. Six years both is and isn't a long time, in terms of cultural memory. "Jigsaw" attempts to acknowledge the stylish changes that had passed since 2010. At the same time, it keeps doing most of what the previous "Saw" movies had already done, resisting any claims to bring an actual reinvention of the series. Maybe that is why "Jigsaw" – while still easily making back its modest production budget at the box office – failed to reignite the public's appetite for carnage like this. Perhaps not enough time has passed after all for us to feel like we were missing this particular type of butchery yet... [6/10]