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Directed By
David Hackl
Written By:
Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan
Cast:
Julie Benz, Meagan Good, Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, Scott Patterson, Costas Mandylor, Betsy Russell, Carlo Rota, Mark Rolston, Al Sapienza, Greg Bryk, Samantha Lemole, Alex Revan, Sheila Shah, Dana Sorman, Laura Gordon
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Saw V (2008)
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Movie Review by Jarrod
October 26th, 2008
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'Saw V' is yet another mostly useless addition to the franchise that, along with Hostel, helped to launch the so-called torture porn subgenre. This series should have ended with Saw III, which brought everything to a relatively logical conclusion and tied up most of the loose ends, leaving Saw IV to provide some backstory about the devious Jigsaw Killer (Tobin Bell), and what drove him to commit his crimes.
He never considered himself to be evil, and created horrific scenarios in which his specifically selected victims would be forced to make decisions to free themselves from his hideous devices. If they did not react quickly enough, they would die. Jigsaw, a terminally ill cancer patient, died at the end of Saw III. So too, did Amanda (Shawnee Smith), whom Jigsaw had trained to be his successor. However, there is still one accomplice left, detective Mark Hoffman (Costas Madylor).
We will come to learn about Hoffman's past, and how he came to work for Jigsaw in the first place. An unpleasant complication emerges in the form of FBI agent Peter Strahm (Scott Patterson), who manages to survive the trap Hoffman had set for him, and begins an investigation that will lead him to uncover Hoffman's link to Jigsaw, which Hoffman is trying to bury permanently, while also seeking to claim credit for solving the Jigsaw case. Meanwhile, a new game is underway; five people, unknowingly connected to one another, are put through a series of diabolical tests, the end result will be that only one of them is left standing. Again, each victim was picked for a reason. 'Saw V' assumes almost from the start that you have recently watched its predecessor, and remembered a few key details.
The movie devotes most of its time to flashbacks, in which we are revisited by deceased characters from previous installments, including Jigsaw, but also David Tapp (Danny Glover), Amanda, and Jeff (Angus MacFadyen). Jigsaw is one of the more memorable villains of the 21st century, even after extensive efforts at humanization that have diffused some of his mystique and menace, and he is still played brilliantly by Bell, who must appreciate the top billing he gets here, and the paycheck that inevitably goes along with it. Mandylor, unfortunately, is a poor replacement for Jigsaw; a boring and badly written antagonist who simply tries to follow in the footsteps of his smarter, more nefarious mentor. The film is devoid of original ideas and the plot is an empty, convoluted mess that tries desperately to continue a story that has already been effectively ended. 'Saw' is becoming a modern-day version of Halloween and Friday the 13th, churning out sequels on an annual basis that get sillier and more redundant as they progress.
Loyal fans keep this tradition alive. The first three Saw flicks had at least one fiendishly inventive, revolting, or gruesome sequence that stood out from the rest; Saw II had the needle pit, and Saw III had that guy chained to the bottom of a pit and getting covered by the foul liquid spilling out of maggot-infested pig corpses dropped into a grinder. 'Saw V's best bit occurs in the opening segment, where a man is strapped to a table, instructed to escape by crushing his own hands before he gets cut in half by a pendulum. This scene is gory, well-crafted, and even somewhat suspenseful, but nothing that follows it is. It is fascinating how information keeps getting added to the ongoing narrative retroactively, with prior developments rehashed and combined with new revelations that were apparently hidden before.
Director David Heckl worked as an assistant director on Saw III and IV, and basically just tries to copy the style of Darren Lynn Bousman; the atmosphere is certainly right, with the action unfolding in dark, dank, and decrepit places. The score consists of creepy atonal music that plays incessantly through several frames, supposedly to build up tension, but, in a theater with the volume cranked up, it has the effect of nails on a chalkboard, not to mention the other sound effects, which more or less amount to a bunch of metallic clanking noises punctuated by screams.
The tagline says "You won't believe how it ends", and maybe you won't, but instead of a clever twist or two, I found something disappointingly and insultingly anti-climactic. When it is over, you are left thinking about how they could possibly come up with enough material to make ANOTHER sequel, but at this point, such concerns are irrelevant.
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