Saw The Final Chapter

Film/DVD

There have been so many Saw films that I don’t feel I need to give you the backdrop to this one. It is the final movie in a franchise that has seen some high points, some very low points, and blood, guts, and gore like nothing before.

Within the first five minutes we are ‘treated’ to two really shocking scenes. The opener sees a flash back to the very first film where the ‘hero’, the man who managed to saw off his own foot, is seen, in great agony, ‘sealing’ the bloody wound on a boiling pipe. Delightful.

A Saw classic ‘game’ quickly follows this scene. Two men, in a shop window, awaken to find they are attached to huge electric saw blades. We then spot a woman who is chained above them, suspended over a third blade. A love triangle that is about to get bloody. This time with gruesome spectators including people who are filming the whole ordeal on their mobile phones.

It is grotesque, repulsive, and very very silly. The acting is often so bad it is almost comedic. There is a ‘plot’, but that will always play second fiddle to the twisted challenges.

There are two key points I need to make. First, unlike previous films from the franchise, this film seems so cheap. The previously horrifying torture games from other films that have seemed so ‘real’ in the past look naff, unbelievable, and very low budget.  Second, without the real villain Jigsaw, the film fails to have any charisma. Tobin Bell, Jigsaw himself, appears for less than five minutes of weak flashback. It is simply not enough.

This time around we meet Jigsaw survivor groups, Jigsaw’s widow, frequent flashbacks, nightmare scenarios, and plenty of recycled ‘games’ forced onto unwilling victims. There are plenty of ‘look away from the screen’ moments, but this is not to do with the gore, it is because this is a cheap and nasty film – at times they don’t even make the effort to hide the switch from human to dummy. Rubbish.

As with previous Saw outings, you do find that you are quickly desensitised to the shock and gore of what is unfolding, screaming, fake blood and human traps blend into a numbing nothing. This time around the entire thing failed to hold my attention for more than 20 minutes before I was utterly irritated.

Want to play a game? Actually, I think I’ll have a cup of tea and do anything else instead.

1/10. Utter garbage from start to finish with only one sequence of any note. A real shame they let it come to this.