I’m probably going to make a habit of saying this over the next few months, now that the COVID shuffle has begun to ease up and all the big franchise pictures from last year are finally primed for release, but it’s especially true for this film in particular: I have been hyped for this for well over a year. The Saw series remains my all-time favourite movie franchise, Saw III is one of my all-time favourite films, and for as much of a remix as it was, the Spierig Brothers’ Jigsaw was a satisfying effort. I look forward to new Saw movies the same way Nintendo kids look forward to new Zelda games; I hunger for shit like this.
And this latest entry is something of a special case within the larger canon, as it’s effectively a combination of the old (The first seven films), the new (Jigsaw), and the even newer. On the old front, Darren Lynn Bousman has returned to the director’s chair, along with Charlie Clouser once again on soundscape duties. Teaming up with newly-minted cinematographer Jordan Oram and editor Dev Singh, Bousman brings back the anxiety montages that made for some of Saw II, III and IV’s tensest non-trap moments (like we’re seeing into the character’s mind as they internally rage the fuck out about their circumstances), and the pacing throughout is just as taut. It’s like he never left the franchise at all, he’s slipped back in so cleanly (more to the point, it’s like the muddled result of IV never even happened).
It's also the closest he’s ever gotten to the original James Wan aesthetic, especially with how it handles its gore. Oh, don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty to go around (and the practical effects are as squirm-worthy as ever), but the frame doesn’t revel in it as was the case for the later entries. Not only that, but the traps themselves are remarkably simple in their composition and the ‘game’ therein: Sacrifice something, or lose everything. To the point, and more interested in direct symbology than coming up with increasingly elaborate ways to kill people; even as a diehard fan, this back-to-basics approach is rather refreshing and keeps things from devolving into gorehound hysterics.
As for the new, Jigsaw writers Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger are back on scripting duty, and even the visuals appear to be carrying some of the Spierigs’ aesthetic with them. The oversaturated oranges and yellows here match with how the story is set in a city in the middle of a massive heatwave. And when paired with the icy blues of the trap scenes, it manages to override the familiarity of the orange/teal dichotomy that has been flogged to death in mainstream cinema because it has real purpose being included here. It brings a certain Se7en vibe to the whole thing which, given the narrative focus this time around, proves to be very fitting.
And now for the newer-than-new, and here’s where I start getting excited. See, while Stolberg and Goldfinger did a lot of work on the screenplay, the initial story treatment and final polish were done by star and producer Chris Rock. With us now in the Peele-led golden age for Black horror, him wanting to jump on that bandwagon seems fairly straight-forward, but that would only detract from how laser-guided his focus is with this project, both behind and in-front of the camera. In front of it, him as a wiseass, hard-nosed detective allows him to keep his trademark sense of humour while also letting him act the fuck out of the darker aspects of the story and his character.
On the writing front, the way he goes beyond the previous remix effort is quite astounding to watch unfold in real time, as his own spin on the franchise not only pays due diligence to the old guard, but highlights it as needing to stick around in the popular consciousness. These films have involved elements of police work and musings on justice vs. revenge since the very beginning, but never before has the story been so intrinsically about the police force. Namely, a very crooked police force, where Rock’s Zeke finds himself as possibly the only honest cop left.
From there, the way it goes about the usual morality play schtick, following Jigsaw’s modus operandi without photocopying it, is quite bold without feeling like ‘a Saw film for people who hate Saw films’. It’s still got the killer soundtrack, the compelling characters, even the veins of morbid humour, but they’ve all been given a face-lift to push the franchise standard into new territory. Territory where, once we learn more about the victims of the new traps and the mastermind behind them all, it genuinely had me contemplating about ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ within the frame of the story, turning the usual moral greyness into genuinely thought-provoking stuff. They may have abandoned the timeline fuckery of the past, but they still found a way to mess with the heads of the audience.
There’s also how Chris Rock, and the production around him, treats the larger topic of police misconduct and the kind of ‘scratch my back’ mentality that even the older films showed plenty of understanding of. Given modern perceptions of law enforcement, this being a simple revenge fantasy against the Bastards would’ve been expected. But because Rock depicts it all from the inside-out, from the POV of someone trying to do the right thing even when that comes into conflict with his own co-workers, it grasps for a level of maturity I don’t think has ever been reached within this franchise, and I say that as someone who fucking loves these movies.
On any other occasion, Chris Rock and his father Samuel L. Jackson going after Jigsaw would be a novelty; a fresh coat of paint on a stagnant series that is eons behind the times in its torture porn trappings. But this isn’t one of those occasions. This is the dawn of a new age. It reworks the old formula, brings out iconography I don’t even think the original filmmakers could have conceived of (let’s just say the pig mask takes on a whole new meaning here), and injects relevant social commentary on law enforcement and the kind of wise-cracks one would expect from Chris Rock and Sam Jackson in a movie together, and all of it slots together like it was always meant to lead up to this. I went into this curious about whatever the hell Chris Rock’s Saw was going to look like, but I never would have guessed that it would turn out this brilliantly.
Even if you’ve never liked or even seen a Saw movie in the past, and you’re a fan of horror cinema and/or cop movies, I have to recommend this film. It’s everything that makes the franchise what it is, refined to the point where it makes for one of the series’ finest efforts to date, up there with the original and my fave Saw III. I do not make that kind of statement lightly.
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