JB & The Chop Do: Saw V (2008)

Oh man. For reals. These movies keep going. More and more. Still working elaborately to provide a solid story to elevate it above the rest of horror franchises, but forcing in enough gore to keep curling your toes, and hell no people, not in the good kind of way!

SYNOPSIS: Following Jigsaw’s grisly demise, Mark Hoffman is commended as a hero, but Agent Strahm is suspicious, and delves into Hoffman’s past. Meanwhile, another group of strangers are put through a series of gruesome tests. – via IMDB

First things first, 95 minutes again, score!

Naturally, we must open with some gory fucking slaying. There are like zero shockers here anymore. Screw it, you can all cringe with me:

Can I just mention that if someone jumped out at me in the dark, I’d have a fucking stroke? A few months ago I let my friend out the gate at my house, and it was late, it was dark. I have these tree things in the garden, and when I turned around and started walking back down to my flat, I realised something was amiss. I knew it, I could just feel it in the air. I walked real slow, and was waiting for my eyes to completely adjust. I realised that something was not right by one of the tree things, that the shadow was more hulking than usual. My heart skipped, I was in full on fight or flight mode, when my husband cracked up and told me “Don’t worry noodle, it’s just me.” I almost died just there, I was not pleased with him. Ugh.

Just note – all these tree bush things are dead now cause it is winter, but in summer they are all open and leafy and shit. See how he is just lingering just after the one? Now imagine the dead of night, and we do live in a country with a hectic crime rate. So uncalled for.

While we are on the procrastination boat here, discussing everything but the movie, have you guys ever seen the video about living with Jigsaw? If not, I highly recommend it! At least this tangent is sort of related… right??

Anyway, enough rambling. I suppose I must get back to the movie. Meh. Dude. From the beginning it is evident that these people in the latest game should be working together, but oh nooooo, why on Earth would they do that? They were all actually quite frigging annoying, if we are being honest here, and we are all about honesty!

Patterson is, again, really good. I actually thoroughly enjoy his entry to the franchise. He is consistent, solid, believable. A character to root for, and goodness knows we haven’t actually had one of those throughout this series. He was just seriously on the wrong case at the wrong time.

A gimmick that got old quickly was exploring the crime scenes from the back forward. I am so tired of the flashbacks within flashbacks in this series. I have to give it credit though (still), for a gory franchise featuring such gruesome crap, it really tried hard to have an actual story. That is more than most of these things can say. However, that does not change the fact that each of these movies is a recycled version of the last, PLUS AN UNEXPECTED TWIST. Pfffff. As if.

Saw V was going for a big narrative again, and this is where these movies fall short. As I mentioned above, respect for trying to weave this one, huge, elaborate plot and story and characters and all, but sometimes they try to take it too far, if you ask me.

I was also not liking this whole “Make Strahm Look Guilty” aspect at all. Then again, are any characters actually safe in this franchise? No. Pity they gave us one to root for. Fucking sadists.

Luckily this one was, again, not too noisy. Jeesh, some of those earlier ones were out of hand crazy, loud, grating. Anyway, this movie is super forgettable when it is all said and done, except for the end of it. That plotsie is one we remember (sheesh, really did see more of these silly films than I thought – shows you how they are totally not a memorable lot). Also – for such a short film, it felt long. So very long.

First off, I need to issue an apology. Last week I mentioned that Julie Benz was in this and that I swore she was the worst actress around town. Well – when I saw the name Julie Benz I was actually thinking of someone else – Julie Benz is actually a pretty good actress and I really liked her in The Boondock Saints 2 and that TV show she was on (No Ordinary Family). I was thinking of Kiele Sanchez, star of the miserable 30 Days of Night: Dark Days and resident ham in The Perfect Getaway. She was a totally the best thing about Saw V and I guess the joke is on me. What a fucking chop!

Let’s see if number five is going to give us anything different this time around. Open with the gruesome death of someone random who has nothing to do with anything? CHECK.

Follow around someone wearing a hoodie that is way too giant for their head and who also covers their entire face like they’re in the middle of a sand storm in the Middle East? CHECK.

Introduce some random people who may or may not have anything to do with anything but exist to die horrible, painful deaths? CHECK.

Put these people through terrible tests that are NOT POSSIBLE to be completed in the amount of time they are slotted, but they do anyway? CHECK.

The Chop will make a non-vague comment about the bountifulness of Jigsaw’s wife’s bosom? CHECK.

The filmmakers will spend the last 10-15 minutes of the movie using sweeping and circling and flashing series of images to make everything from the last five movies including the new characters in the current movie mash together to try and incorporate them all onto one closely knit web of unbelievably complex and impossibly planned coincidences. CHECK FUCKING CHECK.

The movie will end with a cliffhanger encompassing something that could never possibly happen in a million years because of the thousands of decisions that would have to be made correctly for this series of events to come true? CHECK.

I appreciate what these movies are trying to do (or tried, I guess, since the series is almost over) (oh wait there’s TWO more to go and one in production) – use the same money making trick, add more characters and use the old, now dead characters in flashback sequences. I appreciate that these made a lot of money.  I appreciate that these probably got a lot of guys out on Friday night dates and got some good squeezing action from their terrified or grossed out counterpart. I guess, after watching them all relatively in a row, I don’t appreciate that it’s the SAME story over and over.  Blood and guts, talking, flashbacks, whispering, blood and guts, people who need to work together and don’t, blood and guts, whispering, blood and guts, circular sweeping flashbacks tying everything together, implausible ending sequence. That would be like me talking about a movie and quickly getting distracted by boobs. Like, they other day I watch this movie called Listening with this super hot chick in it named Amber Bollinger.

And I was all ‘hey, wow you’re super pretty and you’re not afraid to show your toppies’ and then I saved this picture as sawv11

And the pic title is totally tricking out my OCD so I need to get off of here before my tics start. That name is worse than having your Starbursts out on a table and not organized by color. To close, I didn’t really like this one very much but ANYTHING is better than THIS