Believe it or not, I’ve seen every Saw movie made and have enjoyed more of them than I’ve hated. I liked this spinoff sequel, but it’s not exactly good. If you’ve seen one Saw movie you have seen them all. Police attempt to stop the “Jigsaw Killer” or his copycat, while a game goes on in which seemingly random people are tortured to teach each of them a lesson. The police are blundering buffoons and the characters are selfish morons who the killer, or killers, are playing the entire time. The movie ends with a nice twist that ties everything up in a neat bow. Jigsaw, the newest entry in the Saw series, sticks to its franchise formula to a tee.

For a movie series with such a fetish for elaborate traps, torture, and gore, there are little of these slasher staples in this iteration of Saw compared to the previous films. There isn’t much blood, and most of the traps are unimaginative. Which is disappointing since that’s probably what most of the movie’s audience came to see. The direction, acting, and writing are all abysmal, almost expectedly so, since the films’ scriptwriters admittedly stage their movie plots around the objective of placing characters into various agonizing traps. The aforementioned plot of this movie revolves around trying to find out if the original “Jigsaw Killer,” John Kramer, is still alive, or if his fiendish games are simply being reenacted by a copycat killer. Based on the prior narrative arc, Kramer is supposed to have been dead for ten years, with the audience having watched him die in Saw III. Despite this, actor Tobin Bell, who plays John Kramer, the series star and the original “Jigsaw Killer” has made an appearance in every Saw sequel due to twists, flashbacks, and narrative trickery. Jigsaw is no different. The film a safe, by the book, Saw movie.