Jig­saw

Sev­en years after dimin­ish­ing returns put this once prof­itable fran­chise on indef­i­nite hia­tus, the Jig­saw killer is back in the eighth instal­ment of the Saw saga. This much antic­i­pat­ed return is direct­ed by the Spierig broth­ers, the cun­ning minds behind 2009’s Day­break­ers and the 2014 time-bend­ing thriller Pre­des­ti­na­tion. Who bet­ter to take on a series pre­oc­cu­pied with inven­tive vio­lence and nar­ra­tive sleight-of-hand than a pair of direc­tors already renowned for deliv­er­ing com­plex tem­po­ral tricks and daz­zling gore.

With such dis­tinc­tive tal­ent picked for the come­back, fans right­ful­ly expect­ed some­thing a lit­tle spe­cial. Far from it: Jig­saw isn’t any less com­pe­tent than the best of its pre­de­ces­sors, but it is lit­tle more than a capa­ble rehash of things these films have done over and over. Plus, it offers lit­tle of what has made the Spierigs’ work so distinctive.

From the set designs to the cos­tumes and the per­for­mances, the film seems to con­scious­ly adopt a retro, mid-noughties hor­ror movie aes­thet­ic. Yet a mod­est homage to the glo­ry days of the pre­vi­ous films can hard­ly be enough to revive a series that has been dead for sev­en years – let alone seduce a new gen­er­a­tion of fans.

Struc­tural­ly, Jig­saw comes the clos­est to aping Saw II. The new film fol­lows a group of not-so-inno­cent vic­tims test­ed by a series of more-or-less dead­ly games, as well as the police inves­ti­gat­ing their deaths as bod­ies pile up in the city. In pre­vi­ous instal­ments, cut-aways to the ridicu­lous­ly cliched TV-look­ing cops often pro­vid­ed a wel­come relief from the incred­i­ble ten­sion and real­is­tic vio­lence of the games. But here, the curi­ous­ly mut­ed gore scenes ren­der the police inves­ti­ga­tion more irri­tat­ing than reas­sur­ing. The film’s over-reliance on the detec­tive sequences to advance the nar­ra­tive only dimin­ish­es a fan’s thirst for blood and for the hilar­i­ous­ly over­wrought traps of yore.

Indeed, one of the unde­ni­able plea­sures of this fran­chise has always been the intri­cate con­nec­tion between the soon-to-be-vic­tims’ mun­dane crimes, and the very sick, very com­plex traps that John Kramer, aka Jig­saw (Tobin Bell) and his pro­tégés espe­cial­ly designed for them. To get free from their traps, vic­tims had to over­come the one spe­cif­ic default that led them to hurt oth­er peo­ple. Accord­ing to Kramer’s weird log­ic, this was an oppor­tu­ni­ty for his vic­tims to exor­cise their demons and repent. In Jig­saw, this amus­ing non-equiv­a­lence between crime and pun­ish­ment is almost absent, with the traps only super­fi­cial­ly relat­ed to the sins of his pris­on­ers. This is all the more jar­ring as the film repeat­ed­ly ref­er­ences what might be Kramer’s most famous device, the ​‘reverse beartrap.’

Jig­saw seems more inter­est­ed in explor­ing Jigsaw“the man,” than it is in repro­duc­ing or updat­ing his meth­ods for the cur­rent day. Despite the fact that no one has heard of or seen the killer since Saw 3D in 2010, the film con­stant­ly ref­er­ences back to him, with most of its run­time lit­tle more than a slow build up to Bell’s bril­liant but brief appear­ance. The man and his voice – heard on the tapes that the vic­tims have to play – are undoubt­ed­ly the film’s high­lights, and this new instal­ment thank­ful­ly does not depart from Jigsaw’s most amus­ing habit: his words of advice are always out­ra­geous­ly, painful­ly lit­er­al. There’s always mon­ey in the banana stand. He’s still hav­ing a hell of a time.