Make Your Choice pt. 4

An in depth look at the Saw Series

“Death is a surprise party. Unless, of course, you’re already dead on the inside.”

John Kramer (Saw)

The last two movies in the Saw series are vastly different. Saw The Final Chapter is pretty much a direct sequel from Saw 6, picking up pretty much exactly Saw 6 left off, while Jigsaw is a time jump.

Personally, I feel they should not have created Saw The Final Chapter because it was god awful. The majority of the movie was about characters I did not personally care about. Jill Tuck (Jigsaw’s wife) ratted out Detective Hoffman to the actual police, so all the work he put in killing FBI agents and framing Agent Strahm was rendered useless. I did like that Jill tried to kill Hoffman, but I had wanted Jill to take over as Jigsaw rather than Hoffman surviving and going after her. As a result, a lot of the movie was about Hoffman evading police and trying to kill Jill, even though that would solve literally none of his problems.

To make matters worse, Saw The Final Chapter didn’t even have any cool traps and the Game that was played was uninventive and boring. This random guy Brandon, who we’d never seen before, claimed to have survived a Jigsaw trap and he was going public with it and ended up making a lot of money from it. Fortunately for him (or unfortunately depending on how you choose to look at it) he had never actually been in a Jigsaw trap. Of course, Hoffman knows this and decided to create a game where he tested Brandon as a sort of punishment for lying and profiting off other peoples suffering. This game did not have any cool tarps and at the end Hoffman killed Brandon’s wife Laurie by incinerating her in a giant furnace. This was not only disgusting, but also entirely unnecessary since Laurie was the only one in the whole scheme who had no idea that her husband was lying. She was innocent.

Overall you could argue that this game represents how Hoffman’s mental state was deteriorating, but in my opinion the writers were just lazy. The movie was them throwing random stuff together because they had to. The way Saw 6 ended, Saw The Final Chapter had potential, however it really fell short and was pretty disappointing.

Jigsaw on the other hand, really exceeded expectations in a way. It is not without its flaws, but in the grand scheme of the Saw Series it is one of the better movies. The events of Jigsaw supposedly occur 10 years after John Kramer (the OG Jigsaw) died in Saw 3. As a result, all of the events from Saw 5 to Saw The Final Chapter have already happened. The Game is played with five people forced to undergo tests in an abandoned barn. In the first test one poor guy doesn’t wake up in time and is presumably killed by the buzz saws because he didn’t wake up for the instructions. Over the course of the rest of the game two more people die, leaving only Anna and this guy Ryan who got his leg cut off. John Kramer then comes into the room and tells gives Anna and Ryan their “key to freedom” (a shotgun shell) and puts it in the shotgun in the middle of the room. I like this test a lot because the keys to their shackles are in the shotgun shell and all they have to do is break open the shell and they can escape. Tragically for them, Anna instead tries to kill Ryan and they end up stuck in the room.

While this is happening Detective Halloran (not to be confused with Detective Hoffman of previous movies, why can’t they be more creative with names?) and some medical forensic scientists Eleanor and Logan attempt to find out where this new game is being played. They eventually locate the abandoned barn, but Eleanor and Logan think Halloran is Jigsaw while Halloran thinks they are Jigsaw so a fun chase ensues. This ends with Eleanor presumably escaping while Halloran and Logan end up in a Jigsaw trap. They are told they must confess their sins to survive and Halloran forces Logan to go first. Logan is seemingly killed and Halloran is forced to confess. This however is a prank and after Halloran “confesses” Logan gets up off the floor proving that he is not actually dead and is in fact the new Jigsaw.

The Game Halloran was investigating was actually a fake game. The one with Anna and Ryan was actually the first ever game played and their bodies were never found and the guy who seemed to die first was Logan. Jigsaw felt that his mistake in the amount of drugs he gave Logan should not have meant he had to die. As a result, Logan became Jigsaw’s first apprentice and it was him who was placing bodies for Halloran to find. This is a really cool twist because it was thought that the Game in Saw 1 was the first game, but now there is another apprentice to keep the Saw series going. Tragically Halloran died in his trap because he did not confess what Logan wanted him to.

Thus concludes an overview of the Saw Movies, however this is not the end of Saw related Blogs. There is still much to discuss.

“You think it’s over just because I am dead? It’s not over. The games have just begun.”

John Kramer (Saw 4)