Saturday, November 11, 2017

Jigsaw - The Return of that Scary Creepy Horrific Villain of the Saw Series

I found out that this movie started playing in Indonesian theaters 3 days ago. But strangely enough it was not playing in all cinema chains. When my wife was having an event in Plaza Indonesia yesterday, I decided to see this movie in Grand Indonesia which was only few minutes walking distance. As usual I would watch a horror movie by myself. After so many commercials the movie finally started at 6.45 PM and the audience were quite a lot though not a full house. Now let us get on with the movie.

Brief Story Line

Five people awaken in a confined room with their heads covered with a bucket-like mask and their necks tied to steel chains. All of them were given instruction to do a task so they could saved themselves from saws on the walls. The survivors from this first task was Anna (Laura Vandervoort - Smallville and Bitten TV series etc), Ryan (Paul Braunstein), Mitch (Mandela Van Peebles) and Carly (Brittany Allen). They would later be on be given more impossible tasks through tapes and TV from the person who seemed to know about each of their dark past.


Meanwhile, a body of a man hung with his head covered in the bucket mask was found in a park. The detectives investigating the case were Halloran (Callum Keith Rennie - Butterfly on a Wheel, Battlestar Galactica TV series etc) and his partner Keith Hunt (Clé Bennett - Heroes Reborn TV series etc). They got help from the mortician Logan (Matt Passmore - The Glades TV series etc) with his partner Eleanor (Hannah Emily Anderson - Shoot the Messenger TV series). The clues of this body seemed to hint that the murderer was none other than the Jigsaw killer (Tobin Bell - The Quick and the Dead etc) though it seemed to be impossible since he had died for more than 10 years.

Back to the confined space, the tasks given to the remaining people were even more dangerous than before and would resulted to one of them had to admit the wrongdoings to avoid the death of the rest. So could these people be free from what looked like Jigsaw's work? Could the detectives find out what really happened and whether it was indeed the work of Jigsaw? Could the morticians find the location where the people were held captive? Find them all in this twisted violent gruesome gory horror movie.

End of Brief Story Line

To be honest, I had not seen the previous Saw movies as I think I only ever watched the original which at that time felt too gory for my taste. But when I read the brief synopsis from internet, I think the movie could be understood even if I have not seen the previous Saw movies. The plot from this movie was pretty interesting and there were twists after twists which kept us guessing till the end. I was a bit surprised to the multiple twists which even if a bit much were actually what made me liked the movie. Not the gruesome violent parts which I think were pretty standard and also surprisingly not a lot (probably they reduced it to avoid being said as too gory?).

The movie was moving at a standard pace and for a 1.5 hour film, it felt just nice. Not too long and not too short. The 2 sides of the story felt pretty good to my opinion, although it can also be considered as distraction and reducing the intensity, suspense and creepiness if the movie was fully shot only in the confined spaces. The story here might felt a bit stretched by some people and critics did not like this movie either. But for horror movie which already had a cult following, what critics said would mean nothing anyway. So it was not a surprise to see this movie doing quite well (as at my writing already had box office 6 times its original budget and possibly make it to 10 times by the time it completed its theatrical release).

The make up effects of the bloody bodies were quite good, but I do not really like the effects of the death of 1 character as I think it was a bit too much). The sound effects were good, though the quality of the picture on screen not too good as it felt too dark even on the outside. As a neutral (not a fan of Saw movies), I was actually pretty satisfied with this film. It felt intriguing, and the twists were surprising but some people may not like it. I enjoyed this movie such that I became interested in watching the rest of the Saw movies just to see if I could enjoy them as well. The movie was directed by the Spierig Brothers who directed horror movies such as Undead and Daybreakers and a very cool science fiction movie Predestination. Hopefully they could direct other movies in future that would be commercially successful as well. Got to thank James Wan also who directed the first and original Saw film and gave audience a new kind of horror movie and an iconic horrific villain character Jigsaw.

Overall, it was quite an interesting horror movie. It was not supernatural horror of ghost or exorcism. It was plain horror and creepiness with some twists. So if you are interested in looking for horror movie but too scared to see some ghosts, then this movie could be an option. But then again, if you are also afraid of seeing lots of blood or horrific pictures of bodies, then this one would not suit you either. Might as well not see a horror movie at all, hahaha. Oh before I forgot, there was no end credit scenes at all. So you can leave immediately if you want when the last scene was shown.

Happy watching!

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

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