Saw VI

This is like a family reunion! Amanda is back! Jigsaw is back! Jigsaw's (ex-)wife is in on everything! The first two are only back in flashbacks, but Jill is there to the final act, where Mark Hoffman gets his own little test.

The main attraction is an insurance honcho named William who has to work his way through a number of tests, usually involving the sacrifice of lives of people working for him. If he makes it in time, he will be reunited with his family. On the other end of his route are two cages, one holding a mother and son, the other holding an annoying journalist woman that got a little too close to a truth of some kind.

Now, we assume that the mother and son are the family in question. In reality, they are family to a deceased man, who got denied coverage of his potentially life saving treatment by William. Ultimately, these two will decide whether William lives or dies. The journalist is his sister.

Unfortunately, Mark Hoffman will probably live to see another day as a total douche bag, as his name appears in the cast list of Saw 3D and a flashback with him in it is probably too much to hope for.

Now I will have to lay the story to rest until October 10, when I have already arranged to watch the final chapter with my horror film aficionado friend.

5/10

Saw V

This may be the least exciting part in the Saw series.

Don't get me wrong, there is blood and guts a-plenty, but there is also a lot of talking. And I mean a lot. Time line wise, this is even more confusing than parts III and IV, which are happen parallel each other. This is before and alongside those two. I think.

Anyway, this is cop against cop. The not-so-nice-guy (Agent Strahm) and the I-am-so-mean-I-don't-ever-smile-(and-if-I-would-it-would-probably-be-creepy)-guy (Mark Hoffman) are kind of hunting each other. Just to be clear, Hoffman is the bad guy in this scenario. This was established at the end of part IV. I think.

While this happens, a group of people have to go through their own private hell. They only stop to figure out their connection and what Jigsaw meant to go against their instinct when it is too late for most of them. Whether or not the last one standing actually survives is not quite clear. (Also irrelevant.) An ambulance gets called on her behalf but that is the last we get on that situation. This person is played by Julie Benz.With dark hair that looks totally like a wig.

In the end, Agent Strahm is asked to trust in Jigsaw to trust him when he tells him that the only way out alive is to climb into this hear casket filled with shards of glass. Strahm, of course, hasn't learn anything from hunting the culprit(s) and - in a fight - throws his new nemesis Hoffman into said casket. Hoffman is saved, Strahm is being squashed to death.

5/10

Saw IV

Now, this may appear even more confusing than the previous part, but really it gives you so many answers and - if you are patient - you will figure it out in the end.

As I so often do, I will now give you one big spoiler off the bat: whatever happens after the beginning credits happens more or less at the same time as the entirety of part III. Before the credits you see what happens after Jigsaw died. This may not make much sense on paper, but it does once you give yourself over to the notion that this is not linear storytelling.

The players this time are the law enforcement officers. A local police officer is still looking for Eric Matthews from all the way back in part II. He has been missing for 6 months now but his former colleague is sent on a scavenger hunt to his location. The FBI meanwhile is hunting the hunter, who they believe to be helping Jigsaw (because he himself is too sick to arrange all the elaborate machinery and Amanda is too small to do all of the heavy lifting the preparation has required).

Unfortunately, the FBI agents have to deal with some of the dumbest and one dimensional dialogue in (probably) horror film history. Also, the two actors are terribly wooden (and, yes, well, one dimensional).

Eric Matthews is the one I felt most sorry for. While everyone is off trying to beat the clock and find whoever it is that is now working for Jigsaw, he is stood on a block of ice while at the same time has a noose around his neck. The idea is that he will hang himself once the ice is melted enough while at the same time lowering a see saw contraption that on the other side will put another police guy into water that will then have an unpleasant union with electricity.

The really rough part, however, that no matter if he survives long enough to be presumably saved by his former colleague, as soon as said colleague opens the door to the room, the contraption is rigged to smash his head with two more blocks of ice. (And it does.)

In the end the surviving FBI agent encounters - and shoots - Jeff, who is still stumbling through the building, now looking for his daughter. Also, we now know who Jigsaw's successor is.

At this point I am very much looking forward to the next part(s) and hoping for better dialogue.

6/10

Saw III

Yesterday was Friday the 13th. There was also a full moon. If this does not scream for a horror film night, I don't know what does.

In my continuous quest to see the entire Saw series a friend and I moved on to part III (and, as you will see, part IV right after).

Our favorite psychopath, Jigsaw aka John, is on his deathbed. To finalize the initiation of his very eager pupil Amanda, he has one more elaborate game that she orchestrated on his behalf. A female doctor was kidnapped and is forced to keep John alive for as long as it takes another player, Jeff, to complete a very special series of tests. She is also outfitted with a nifty collar that will explode upon John's death.

Jeff is a sad sack, that has lost his son in a car accident and has been neglecting his wife and daughter ever since. What made things even worse for him is that the driver got off with a mere 6 months sentence. What he is being tested for is whether or not he is able to forgive the people involved in his son's death - the only witness, the judge and the driver himself.

At the same time, Amanda is being tested by John. Apparently, she has not been doing as well as he expected, as she has been mingling with the players (killing, maiming) even after they won their particular games. 

In the end, the doctor wins but Amanda fails and kills her (which was basically her failure). Jeff makes it through the tests without any of the three board pieces surviving. But then we learn that the doctor is his wife and she falls into his arms after she was shot. While she is fighting for her life, Jeff kills both Amanda and John, signing his wife's death sentence. The last he learns from John is that the couple's daughter has been kidnapped and, well, too bad, now John cannot help Jeff find her. Tough luck.

Whereas the story is not as straight forward as parts I and II, what makes this interesting is the flashbacks and parallels that first confuse you but really only gives you the strings tying it all together.

7/10

Saw II

Jigsaw's games are getting more elaborate in part 2. Previously, he usually involved one, sometimes two, people in his little schemes. In Saw II he has a whole house full of players fighting for survival. One of them is a survivor from part 1 of the series, Amanda.

Of course, Amanda turns out to be so much more than this. And anyway, the on-goings in the house are not the actual story. This is much more about Jigsaw wanting Eric Matthews to listen to him. That is the most important rule for this part of the game: listen.

But poor Eric is consumed by his anger and fear because his son is one of the people in the room. In his desperation of wanting to help the boy now! he cannot sit still to abide by the rules. This turns out to be his own downfall. But Jigsaw lets the boy live, which is a nice gesture. Unfortunately, his daddy will never know.

The house holds medication that all the players need to survive the poison gas they have been breathing in since they woke up. The traps holding the syringes with the vital substance or the key (sometimes an actual key) to open the hiding place are evil, of course. There are two I especially love/hate.

A syringe is kept in a box and is visible to the unfortunate woman trying to get to it. There are two openings on the bottom of the box to get your hand through and reach the substance. The problem...once you push your hands in, it is no longer possible to get them back out again, or at least not with help from someone else, because any down movement will make you cut yourself very badly.

My very, very favorite and the most disgusting trap is the pit full of used needles and syringes that was meant for Xavier. But Xavier talks a big game and muscles others into doing the really gross stuff. He throws Amanda into the pit.

As I said in my previous entry, the room from part 1 gets a re-visit and is once again a central part to the story. This is where Eric ends up - right place but wrong time. And jigsaw has found himself an eager student in Amanda.

8/10

Saw

I just realized that most of my blog entries are more or less plot summaries of the films I watch. You can get those everywhere on the web, which makes it redundant. So, I will try to not do that in the future. Not sure what this means for my entries, but there it is. Maybe I will go back and rewrite some of my previous ones. Haven't decided, yet. Anyway....

Two friends and I meet roughly once per months for a movie night. We will watch anywhere from two to four films (depends on how early we start), most - but not all - of them will be horror films. Last night we started on the Saw series, because one friend had never seen any of the films (imagine!) and the other two of us couldn't quite remember how many we have actually watched.

...

This series is really kind of awesome. There are some aspects of the first film that I remember clear as day, but when watching it again last night, I found that there was so much I blocked out. All those flashbacks and scenes that take place elsewhere than inside the room gave me a few of those "oh, yes, that happened, too" moments. For example I could not for the life of me remember that Michael Emerson and Ken Leung are in this. Of course, this probably means that I watched Saw before I watched Lost and I simply did not have anything to connect them with.

What struck me most about the second viewing, though, was that I found myself thinking whether this film would also work without any (or most) of those scenes. What if it actually only took place inside the room? I get that this may leave a few gaps in the story for the viewer, but what that really be so bad? Don't get me wrong, Saw is great as it is, but I would not mind an alternate version that is more sparse.

I absolutely love, love, love the ending of this. Sure, I knew it was coming but I was so looking forward to it. Not even the gross-out bit of Dr. Gordon sawing his own foot off (that bit too) but the revelation of Jigsaw. I also love that they tied this room into the second part of the series, but I am getting ahead of myself...

8/10