Horrorthon Conclusion: 'Jigsaw' (2017)

Hello one and all.

So, my 2017 Halloween Horrorthon officially ended yesterday, October 31st — Halloween. The actual day! Whew! 28 movies this year and a nice eclectic mix this year. I started with Misery and ended up with a movie that would make a sane, normal human being who genuinely loves horror movies miserable! I might've just said more than I should, but read on.

Before I get to it, I will be honest. The big surprise was even a bigger surprise to me, adding a new theatrical movie to the mix. I never did it before and I'm not sure I want to do it again. I am absolutely NOT a fan of 2010s horror. I get the feeling the horror genre had officially reached its peak in the late 1990s, as now all horror movies depend on cheap thrills, labyrinthine plots, an overdosing of CGI (computer-generated imagery), and have absolutely no sense of provocation or even the most remote iota of fear titillation or even the faintest ability to give us nightmares beyond comprehension! Okay, it seems I stepped onto a soapbox just now. My bad; I promise to step down. But, even now, as a cockeyed optimist, I decided to try a new film this year to round out the many gems (and a few germs) that I viewed for All Saint's Eve this year.

No surprise, I had to go for a reboot; or was it a belated sequel?

The final entry is Jigsaw, the much-anticipated reboot (or again, sequel) to Saw VII: The Final Chapter, or to those who remember it as its theatrical incarnation: Saw 3D from 2010. The events are ten years after the events in the last one. I'll be honest with you. I wasn't exactly thrilled with the so-called "final chapter" as it was just more of the same from all the previous Saw films that came before it. The basic concept: a deified serial killer feels the pathetic need to "teach" ne'er-do-wells deep life-lessons with his elaborate traps (he calls them "games") to see if his coerced participants can follow his rules to avoid dismemberment or even gruesome death. If you followed my posts, I took the time to revisit James Wan's 2004 inception film Saw. Despite my very sarcastic, pseudo-goofy tone (I wrote it as if I were Jigsaw), I did acknowledge that it had a small intriguing germ of an idea that soon blew out of whack and painfully deviated from logic, not to mention starting a sad subsection of the horror genre: torture porn.

And yet, I toughed it out with its six sequels and admit they had various degrees of success in craftsmanship, tone, cleverness, and even the gooey-gross-out stuff. Now, it's 2017 and we have a new entry which now delineates the killer's full name and attempts to add more to the man and myth. The franchise even gave character actor Tobin Bell a nice little legacy in the annals of horror monsters and fiends. His name: John Kramer.

Now, what did I think of it?

The 2017 Poster

In a word: "Who the fuck cares?!" (It was actually four, if you kept track). Here's the gist of the plot (shocked that it could consider itself having one!). Ten years later, a new "game" has begun. A slimeball criminal holds a detonator remote and claims that he's been forced to set off another game. His finger releases the trigger and a digital clock in an out-of-the-way barn goes on a minute timer. He gets shot as five strangers are chained to a wall and are awakened. They are given instructions as to how to play and are all dragged to a series of rotating saws protruding from the iron doors. Big surprise, at least one doesn't make it. He gets decapitated.

The head cop fucktard (Callum Keith Rennie) overseas the bloody, mounting body scenario with a handsome M.E. (Matt Passmore) convinced that all the clues point to the Jigsaw Killer who, if anyone remembers, much less cares, had died years ago (his throat was slit by a saw in episode three). The remaining survivors are all treated to elaborate bullshit clues and all are told that their commonality is the need to atone for past "sins" they've committed. Seriously, I do wonder if Jigsaw ever had aspirations for the clergy! Or, was he just some pissed-off billionaire whose tragic, all-around hobby is building sick, body-ripping booby traps to shit out his own life's boredom? Those who have followed the John Kramer/Jigsaw saga remember he was a man dying of terminal cancer who was out to teach people the value of human life. But, to do that, he designed traps where the forced participant would have to bargain for their life or have their body ripped to shreds. Now, here's a simple critical-thinking question. How in the fuck are you supposed to value your life when some sick, demented, pathetically delusional, God-complexed shithead is forcing you to evaluate it when you are about to lose it violently? In a word: Jesus-fucking-Christ!!! And that was a name with a curse word in between!

Okay, the movie's bullshit pseudo-moralizing aside; again, the question is, is it any good? The answer? No. As a movie (this one directed by The Spierig Brothers: Michael and Peter), it's pure defecatory diarrhea-tic shit. Despite the polish and sheen and some well-crafted scenes; it's nothing more than a device to get we (the audience) to try to guess who's the killer and yes, subject us to the latest in stomach-turning, barf-'til-you-gag gore. I asked before and I'll ask again. Exactly, what is the actual entertainment value are we supposed to extract from watching human beings being ripped apart for the sake of shock value? I'm still waiting for the answer to that one — one I know will never come.

In closing, Jigsaw is all slickness and no substance. Not even a (believe me, not even close) surprise cameo by you-know-who softens the blow or even made me care. The characters are all one-note pathetic whiners and even the so-called "final twist" made me laugh so loudly, I nearly pissed my pants! Horror movies are supposed to scare us, shock us, get into our psyche and our core and stay there indefinitely; at least, until it's time for dinner. Jigsaw does none of these things, except make me long for my next Halloween Horrorthon where I can enjoy all my favorite, truly fear-inducing horror movies again.

Thank you all. Happy Halloween and looking forward to doing it again in 2018.