Horror franchises never truly stay dead. "Friday the 13th", "A Nightmare on Elm Street", and "Halloween" have had so many "final" entries that the marketing gimmick has lost meaning. Not even "Saw" is immune; seven years after the supposedly final entry "Saw: The Final Chapter", Jigsaw returns for an eighth film in the aptly titled "Jigsaw". One might expect that a belated sequel such as this would open the door to a new series of films, but the "Saw" series is not one to adhere to conventional logic. "Jigsaw" is a routine "Saw" sequel that adds to the series' grand tradition of overly complicated retroactive explanations, but strangely does nothing to pave the way to more "Saw" sequels.
The film follows another group of unfortunate individuals who find themselves caught in one of John "Jigsaw" Kramer's nefarious torture-porn games, this time it is set in a barn rather than the franchise's usual grimy industrial locales. Each person trapped in the gadget-filled barn is quickly revealed to be guilty of murder. In the series' never-ending attempts to connect everything to Jigsaw, two of the players are tangentially related to the killer. One person sold a motorcycle to Kramer's nephew, and the other happened to be his neighbor. If we get a "Saw 9", I can only assume his next victim will be someone who cut in front of him in a grocery store checkout line.
While the victims run through the grisly game, "Jigsaw" falls on the series mainstay, the requisite detective plot. This time a pair of forensic specialists investigate the corpses that are popping up around town, all suspiciously similar to the work of the long-dead Jigsaw. How can he still be carving up unfortunate folks if he died back in "Saw III"? Could it be a copycat killer, or is Kramer somehow back from the grave? To reveal that would ruin the movie's gloriously moronic explanation.
"Jigsaw" has low goals, never trying to be anything more than a convoluted series of gory set pieces. This is both a curse and a blessing. It is a blessing, because the movie continues the franchise's enjoyably nonsensical flashbacks and retroactive explanations. At one point we see a flashback of Jigsaw drafting the design of his puppet's tricycle. Did we really need to know that he built it? That seems like something he could have easily bought. The film's dogged commitment to these inane details is a marvel. However, the movie's silly dumbness is also a curse. It makes no effort to expand the franchise in any direction, or to answer any of the lingering questions from "Saw: The Final Chapter". If this is the last "Saw" film we ever get, it is not a satisfying conclusion. If the intent was to draw in a new audience for future "Saw" sequels, they have done a poor job of setting up a new round of films. It is a film that is caught in a strange void where it is unclear why it exists in the manner it does, other than the obvious profit motive. It is sure to please "Saw" fans to an extent, but it is not the strong return the series should have had.
Rating: 6/10
