Jigsaw: Let the Games Begin — Jigsaw (Part 8/8)

7 years after the abysmal final chapter, SAW returns with Jigsaw, a sequel that surprised me greatly.

If you didn’t like the first SAW and you still didn’t like SAW II, you probably won’t like Jigsaw. This isn’t a film that’s going to get you on the SAW bandwagon, but if you’re a fan who found yourself increasingly disinterested with the disturbing levels of violence taking more of a front seat to the inherently fucked up morality / mind-games of Jigsaw in the first two films? You might like Jigsaw.

This is a Jigsaw summary with some commentary thrown in (aka opinions and observations), so… don’t read on if you don’t want spoilers.

Because there will be spoilers.

Lots of spoilers.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Alright?

So.

Jigsaw is a different beast than the SAW movies of old in some interesting ways, and almost too similar in other ways. The movie has the double story template that most SAW sequels followed (save for SAW III) where there’s the investigation on one story and the gross-out traps of the victims.

Let’s start with differences though.

First, and most notably… the movie doesn’t open with some disturbing trap. In fact… there’s a car chase! And sort of “thumping” rendition of “Hello Zepp” is playing from the outset. Cops are chasing a man to a roof, and they pin him down, he asks for a detective named Halloran and says either he dies or five other people die and that the games are starting. Is Jigsaw back or is there a copycat?

We’re introduced to a new Detective named Keith, Detective Halloran, and eventually the coroners Eleanor and Logan. It’s made clear that Logan is a vet, and was tortured as a POW. Eleanor seems to have a keen interest in the history of the Jigsaw killer. We learn Keith knows Logan from their time serving, and we learn Halloran is just a teeny bit crooked.

Meanwhile, the actual “game” begins. And… this is actually why I liked this movie so much compared to other SAW sequels. The people being tested aren’t complete idiots . It’s as much a conflict of personality as it is being panicked. Anna quickly figures out how to survive the first trap just by actually paying attention to what the introductory threats from Jigsaw say “you only have to shed a little blood to survive”. Anna is quickly positioned as the Dr. Gordon of the group — she’s freaked out sure, but she’s trying to think intelligently.

These victims all eventually die (Anna included) but while they’re all ultimately disposable, they are a little bit more likeable than many of the victims of SAW’s past. Underdeveloped? Yes. Wooden in performances? Also yes. But still a cut above almost everyone aside from William in SAW VI. Of course, the death is actually her not thinking properly and that spells her demise along with the “jokey dude victim” Ryan.

Back to the police side of things (I’ll briefly return to the “test” in a moment). While some of my favorite parts of this film are the ‘whodunnit’ nature of a movie about Jigsaw killing people 10 years after his death (which make the viewer, at least the SAW savvy one, assume Dr. Gordon has ‘retired’ from being Jigsaw’s apprentice following his brief reveal in SAW 3D) the cops themselves are kinda hard to relate to.

Eleanor, the young coroner is openly stereotyped as the probably has a fetish (either this or the word kink is explicitly used when describing her) for stuff like Jigsaw’s games. In fact before even learn she does in fact find Jigsaw’s “work” fascinating (to a disturbing degree) this assumption is made by another character based on her appearance.

That’s kinda problematic, I think.

Halloran is slimy all over, which makes sense as he’s a corrupt, crooked piece of shit.

Keith is boring. He’s just kinda there to tie pieces of the narrative together and provide the occasional piece of exposition — “Jigsaw has been dead 10 years, Logan was in the war.”

Logan is shown, in brief moments, as a man with a history — he was tortured, in the war, his wife was killed, and he’s raising a daughter on his own. We also get a clear sense of tension between him and Halloran.

Anyways, the biggest issue with the story for me is that Halloran jumps to a (very quick) conclusion that someone in the police is doing this. And that’s how the actual meat of this story starts to unfold. It’s a pretty amateur way to kick off the interesting mystery but… it is what it is. And that’s still better than some of the previous SAW movies.

We learn, quite quickly, that Eleanor was very keen on working at the Coroner’s Office in this city, despite having better offers elsewhere. This increases suspicion and I guess this makes sense in tandem with the fact that Halloran discovers … she’s a member of a “darkweb” Jigsaw fansite.

There’s a lot to unpack there so I won’t but okay.

Logan learns this and defends her and we start to learn more about the two — Eleanor in fact shows Logan her “studio”. It’s kinda fucked up but this woman has a studio where she rebuilds Jigsaw’s traps to see if she can.

Including a “never found but supposedly actually real and used” trap that John Kramer made.

Meanwhile, Keith is spying on the two in Eleanor’s studio, rightfully suspicious (although probably not rightfully allowed to be following them?) of two people chilling in a large warehouse of Jigsaw traps.

So this game, it has five people and they’re slowly being picked off. Meanwhile their bodies are showing up in a weird timeline (which means already the “game” is out of sync with the “investigation” a common SAW trope).

So this is the first big reveal of the film. When only Anna and Ryan are left it looks like freedom is in sight. Anna manages to get them out of the barn in fact. Until — BAM! A pigface sedates her.

And then we eventually watch them wake up in a bathroom.

Not the bathroom, no no no that would be too silly and well worn at this stage which SAW never does, right? It’s a farm bathroom, presumably for washing cattle or pigs or something.

But that’s not the shocking part.

The Pig Face abductor is there. We’re about to see who the new Jigsaw is!

Hold up. What the fuck.

That’s …

John Kramer. That’s like actually Jigsaw.

So this was interesting to me initially. Anna reacts saying “John!” as if she knows him which maybe makes you think she knows more than she’s letting on. But then nope, she doesn’t seem to be clued-in and her death proves that.

But what I found interesting was maybe this was more of a reboot than we thought? Maybe it played off the idea of Jigsaw dying in SAW III but, retcons the actual death, the events that followed and this Jigsaw faked his death?

A lot of people don’t seem to like the twist(s) in the movie. It isn’t groundbreaking but it is interestingly done and does keep that SAW ethos of convoluted timelines, surprise reveals while also working in the 7 movies before and not requiring viewers to be in the weeds on the mythology.

We learn, eventually, that this is a flashback. The whole game storyline is set before SAW. The current games are modeled after this game, and the police didn’t know of this game, making it an unlikely “obvious copycat”.

This leads to the still necessary chase at the end of a SAW movie where things in the present come to a climax, and we see Halloran, Eleanor, and Logan enter the barn of the game. This is, eventually, how we learn it all happened long ago.

The big reveal?

One new game between Halloran and Logan — to confess their sins. Halloran cheats and makes Logan go first (deceptively) and Logan confesses his sins but has his face lasered through. This is the first hint for the attentive viewer that something’s off (think back to an autopsy in the beginning).

Then Halloran goes and starts confessing but feels he’s won. And then.

Logan is still alive? And he’s the Jigsaw copycat?

Yup.

I understand the fundamental issues with this reveal — not only the suggestion of PTSD perhaps being a reason for his motivation to use Jigsaw style killings to get revenge but also the discredit it does to the series few strong points in past movies.

We learn that the traps we’ve watched all happened over 10 years ago. When Jigsaw was just “learning”. Logan was a radiologist and mislabeled John Kramer’s x-rays. Because of this Jigsaw didn’t get treated as early as needed, which is how his cancer became terminal.

First, this confounds the already confusing origin of why John Kramer became Jigsaw — was it his cancer, his attempted suicide, the miscarriage of Gideon? Harder and harder to tell.

Anyways, Logan was that passed out dude in the first trap. Who we assume died. But he didn’t! In fact, John realized he’d fucked up and saved Logan — I guess he didn’t do the meticulous research and had no idea Logan was still traumatized over … trauma. So this kind of destroys the foundation of Jigsaw, which is ugh. But as a twist it’s helpful to learn how Logan helped John with some games as John “gave him a sense of purpose and direction”. Logan also is the only apprentice we know of who actually stops doing the Jigsaw shit. This is the big thing. He wasn’t mentioned ever because he was out of the “game”.

That’s a fascinating idea for me, and it’s kind of the other side of the “what if someone survived a trap and didn’t get fucked up” of SAW 3D.

I find Jigsaw interesting overall though. It’s visually super boring — the gnarled, overly saturated greens of SAWs past. However I do applaud it’s toned down (but still gross) violence, and I do like how it hints at the twist. It’s made me rethink the quality of all SAW sequels, SAW II included. As a result, I think it’s the best sequel in the series but still leagues below SAW.

I’m curious if a sequel happens, as it’s now clear that there are Jigsaw fans out there in the fictional world of the films, and at least one person has now adapted Jigsaw’s methods for a different style of game.

The list:

1. SAW 3D: The Final Chapter
2. SAW V
3. SAW III
4. SAW IV
5. SAW VI
6. SAW II
7. Jigsaw (new!)
8. SAW

(Sorted from Worst to Best)

And, well that’s it. All the movies. Ranked. Will my opinion of Jigsaw change over time? Probably.

Will I write more about this series? Yes. Probably about how I’d do a SAW game. Until then… pretend I’m shutting a door on this Medium post saying “GAME OVER” and that’s that.