By Kelsey Rogers, Asst. Living & Arts Editor
Halloween weekend is the time for horror movies to shine or be shunned. “Jigsaw,” the eighth installment in the “Saw” movie franchise, debuted and grossed $31 million worldwide.
The “Saw” franchise initially took the world by storm. The storyline follows John Kramer, also known as the Jigsaw killer, who sets up games of torture for individuals who have never owned up to any crimes they have committed in their lives that ultimately caused the harm of others.
The audience is disgusted by the gore, but what reels them in is the intricate arc of the plot. As the movies unfold, viewers find that the whole franchise is within one complex timeline, with John Kramer seamlessly predicting the moves of every individual involved within his game even after his death.
“Jigsaw” is another addition that debuted after what appeared to be an already closed-off series. Ten years after John Kramer’s death, mysterious deaths have been coming up and appear to be copying his killing tactics, complete with the jigsaw puzzle piece shape cut out of their skin.
As law enforcement is attempting to track down the killer and debating if Kramer has somehow made a return from the dead, a new game is occurring. Five individuals wake up in a barn with a metal bucket over their heads and a noose around their necks. Jigsaw’s voice can be heard from a recorded tape, where the victims are told that to survive, they will need to sacrifice blood and confess to their past sins.
This is routine, but the context of the game seems far too similar to “Saw V,” which put emphasis on a team doing the opposite of what they think is right in order to survive. With both groups, the games were ultimately made for everyone to only sacrifice a slight amount of pain to move on. Since nobody in the movies seems to follow Jigsaw’s directions and goes into the “every man for himself” mentality, they ultimately end up screwing themselves over.
Since this franchise is one of my favorites from the horror realm, I was trying hard to be optimistic in the beginning. The games that were put on seemed to bore me, but what intrigues me about the series is how I was never able to accurately predict the ending, leaving me staring at the end credits mind blown.
This wasn’t one of those movies. I could easily predict the outcome from the first half hour. Plot twist: it was the man doing the autopsy. They try and fool you for a second to make you think that it’s his colleague or the shady police officer: not really a plot twist at all.
Turns out that the mortician recreated a game that occurred ten years ago, one that he was in himself. The purpose? To get revenge on a cop who took bribes and put innocent people in jail.
Remember the whole tease about how Jigsaw might be back? I was gasping and ready to grab my inhaler when they dug up John Kramer’s casket and realized he wasn’t in there, but when I realized he actually has been dead the whole time I put it back down because this movie was a waste of my breath.
Director James Wan took me through a game of his own: he left me confused as if I was wandering through a corn maze, hopeless and confused with no ultimate purpose.
If you’re going to have another addition, especially one that happens ten years after, try and leave me on edge a little longer than 15 minutes. Those 15 minutes are the only reason why I’m giving this movie three out of five stars, because for the rest of the hour and a half of my time I was praying that something else would take me for a spin and it unfortunately did not.
Let’s play a game: send a horror movie my way that isn’t filled with predictable cliches.