Let me say upfront that I am a HUGE fan of th...e "Saw" movies. I'm not a huge horror fan because I don't find them scary (oooh, LOUD music and a cat jumping out of a cupboard!). The gory ones (to me at least) are guts for the sake of guts with no scares. The Saw movies however have some brains involved too. A person is in a bad situation and there will be gore and blood, but there is a REASON they are there and they (because they have done something bad) have a logical way to escape death (more often than not involving them being in a lot of pain) if they are willing to sacrifice something. They have a choice at redemption via suffering, or they can die. Anyway, I thought that I would probably not like this one so much. You can only take the same basic premise so far, for so long. Y'see, to get the most out of the "Saw" movies, you really have to have watched all of them because they always link together and intertwine (Saw 3 and 4 it turns out were running simulaniously timewise, a clever twist) so I thought (even though I re-watched parts I-IV earlier this year) I would forget the plots from the earlier movies and a lot of the film would be lost to me. Luckily my memory held up pretty well. Jigsaw is still dead, his apprentice Amanda is still dead, but it turns out that Jigsaw had a SECOND hidden apprentice working for him (a cop called Hoffman) Another cop who was supposed to die at the end of Saw 3/4 survived and figured this out, so now Hoffman has to take care of him (and we get lots of flashbacks showing how Hoffman fits into the first four movies) Still, it was loads of gory fun and the subplot with five mysteriously connected strangers trying to escape nasty ends was interesting (although the "twist" was not as shocking as usual) Also, what was in the box that Jigsaw's ex wife recieved? hmm, guess I will be watching "Saw VI" to find out (maybe)
In as much as Hollyw...ood would have to admit that there is only a very slim clientele for these types of films, the genre continues to attract the curious. After four years of running in the Halloween weekends, it finally fell off the top 4 list of films that made the box office top list. That being said, the audience finally got a fill of this type of insanity. This film, not falling off the list at a better time, has represented a period of time when people would rather see blood on the screen rather than dance with death at the hands of justice. During the period of time where justice was due, but never solved, based on the 9/11 crisis, people wanted to justify seeing violence on the screen, but not on the streets of Iraq or Afghanistan. Nevertheless, there are still many audiences out there who outwardly oppose everything the Saw series stands for; that involving torturous blood and gore, the message it sends to our society about immoral behavior, and the quixotic snapshots of people being trapped and mutilated (in some fashion) in sheer and utter horror. This kind of entertainment would never had been filmed even 20 years ago in an unrated world. The sheer possibility that going from then, which is easily blown off as just some tacky horror movie sequel, in general, to the mainstream film based on psycho thrillers, really blows the average viewer for a loop when they first set foot into this type of film. Yet, having said this, my first reaction to this film is as expected. The story blows sheer stupidity as did the first film. Let's just be real. The first film was, without a shadow of a doubt, enough to curdle your blood for life. The rest of the films were mainly there to convince you that you were a serial psycho bent on seeing someone tortured. Typically, as I have been witness to many films of this horror genre and what it has to offer in terms of entertainment, so far this year I can safely say that, while Saw V is, by no means a masterpiece, nor as significant as its first production, it still beats out most of the competition by quite some distance. As you well know, Saw wouldn't be Saw without its morally challenging undercurrent squirming underneath all the corpses and violence, and in this regard, number 5 does well to incorporates the same subtext. ********************** Extreme Spoiler ****************** There are several primary flaws in this film that deserve mentioning. Firstly, there didn't seem to be any main character driving the film forward. Also as well, the script was extremely flimsy in trying to convince the audience that a detective of 22 years (Hoffman) would ever actually turn into the guy he was trying to catch. Another major complaint that I had was most of the short cuts of the film was just reaction shots from various players with little to no meaningful dialog. Even when Jigsaw captured Hoffman and scared him into becoming his accomplice, the dialogue was quite unbelievable. Straham's narration was quite distracting and out of character with the film. With everything else going on, it became quite evident that trying so hard to tie all the tiny pieces of story-line together was enough to break or choke anyone's neck regardless of what crazy box someone in this film was trying to drown or saw off someone's stupid head. I honestly didn't get the fact that Hoffman and his partner were two different people after the editing which really confused me after viewing.
First up, you should be aware that this SAW movie is... quite gory. The first trap we see owes a lot to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum" only here (in comparison to the Vincent Price movie) this is a cut above (pardon the pun.) Tobin Bell's Jigsaw is seen a lot (in flashback, obviously) and much of what you thought you knew of the SAW plot line across the films is cleverly re-woven here. In that regard, you should definitely see the SAW movies in order, a lot of the movie would make no sense at all without knowing what when before and the cleverness of the back plot changes would be lost. The plot of this film as tight and compelling, and the sharp pacing kept me on the edge of my seat for most of the movie. The traps (aside from the Poe style pendulum, which, though well done was for me clearly a "lift") are once more unique and clever. My personal favorite from this film would be the five man table saw trap - It certainly made me grimace! I would definitely recommend this film, though seeing the prior SAW movies first is pretty much a requirement. Tony Kew
I had bought this item a few weeks ago. I have not rea...lly watched the movie I bought because I had already seen it before,serveral times. I like all these Saw movies So much that I decided I wanted to have a copy of each part. I think this series is one of the best Horror series EVER!! I like the clever traps that people get put into and the reasoning for them to be in that situation. The producer keeps us all in suspense the whole way threw all 6 Chapters.
excellent film....scary, scary. very sharp picture. what el...se is there to say, its a saw film....heck, there is even a part six on blu-ray now. I'm gonna try to get it also. thanks. hey, if you are into scary films, i"ll say get this if you haven' t already.