I gave up on the original Saw series a couple of entries-in as any suspense and horror was substituted for needless gore. I was sufficiently intrigued by this reboot though, to give it a go. Five people are captured and subjected to a game that will result in one or more of them dying. When the first body turns up, the police investigation points to the jigsaw killer John Kramer, but he had been killed 10 years before….hadn’t he!?
For a while, Jigsaw seemed like it would be a superior entry in the film series. The gore seemed toned-down and it looked like it was going to be more a police procedural. The cop investigating the case, Detective Halloran (Callum Keith Rennie) has some good one liners and Hannah Emily Anderson is fun as the hot but suspicious pathologist, Eleanor Bonneville, who has red-herring written all over her.
As the film goes on, the focus moves more to the people playing the game, and they are much less interesting characters. Also, the contrivances and plot holes begin to pile-up and the story feels very rushed. There is one good twist towards the end that explains how Kramer could be involved, but that does not redeem a film that started promisingly but could not deliver.
Rating: 5 out of 10