Jigsaw is a 2017 American horror film directed by Michael and Peter Spierig, written by Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger, and starring Matt Passmore, Callum Keith Rennie, Clé Bennett, and Hannah Emily Anderson. It is the eighth installment in the Saw franchise, picking up over a decade after the death of the eponymous Jigsaw killer, during the police investigation of a new succession of murders that fit his modus operandi. Saw 3D (2010) was originally deemed the final installment of the series, before Lionsgate Films commissioned the production of Jigsaw from a pitch by Stolberg and Goldfinger.
More of the same kind of traps that we have seen in the Saw franchise but I do feel some of them are pretty ingenious, if I can say that, in this ones. Well a lot of them are.We are treated to a flashback element as half of the scenes shown in the film aren’t in the same time as the other – the scenes with the 5 people who are killed by various traps set of Jigsaw are actually from 10 years ago. The 5 of them are all selected because they have committed crimes that weren’t caught – selling a faulty bike to a young man who got killed, stealing a bag from an asthmatic woman and the woman dying because she couldn’t breathe and the inhaler was inside it, accidentally caused the death of several of his friends years prior in a car accident but managed to escape blame and killing your baby because it was keeping you up all night and then blaming the death on your husband claiming that he smothered it during his sleep and the husband committing suicide in jail.
An investigation is conducted when a body is found with Jigsaw’s signature stuff and it leads them to a body killed by ingestion of acid & another mangled body – the viewer is left to believe that the three victims are the same as the ones from the barn. However we see that the 5 in the barn are actually victims of Jigsaw and the first guy presumed dead was actually saved by Jigsaw aka John Kramer. He, a doctor and police pathologist named Logan Nelson had accidentally mismarked Kramer’s charts that showed he had cancer. Kramer forgave him and he became Jigsaw’s first apprentice. Logan wants to get to Halloran, a corrupt detective leading the investigation and who has caused the deaths of so many as he protected criminals who became his informants.
As the movie ends you are left wondering what happened to Eleanor, assistant to Logan and who is a self-confessed obsessive fangirl of the Jigsaw case, and has built replicas of Kramer’s traps. She is last shown escaping from the barn and flagging down a vehicle that stops but her expression means something is afoot. Perhaps we might get a sequel to this. 6 outta 10! Didn’t hold my interest for too long!