SAW V

The SAW franchise is just painting by the numbers now. The creators don’t even make an effort to give viewers a mind-bending unexpected twist at the end of SAW V, much less present any compelling characters that will make most people care. In fact, their story contains stupid red herrings that are left hanging and have nothing to do with the main storyline in this episode. SAW V is a very lame excuse for a movie, even for what passes for the horror genre these days.

And, of course, this new torture porn from the most demented minds working in Hollywood today remains as morally repugnant as ever.

In this episode, the vigilante torture killer John Kramer, aka Jigsaw, is dead, so the movie reveals that Kramer blackmailed local police detective Mark Hoffman to help him bring perverted justice to evildoers. Everyone else, however, thinks Hoffman is a hero for saving a little girl from Kramer’s evil clutches.

Everyone, that is, except FBI Agent Peter Strahm, who unexpectedly survives a vicious trap set for him by Kramer and Hoffman. While Peter tries to get the goods on Hoffman, Hoffman is busy engineering another vicious house of torture chambers for five new victims, who were part of a business development scam involving arson that killed eight innocent people. [SPOILER] At the end of the story, Hoffman is able to turn the tables on Peter, who becomes another bloody Jigsaw victim but who also becomes the patsy for Peter’s FBI boss as Jigsaw’s suspected accomplice, so that Hoffman can be free to kill again.

As suggested above, this twist at the end is pretty boring. There’s hardly nothing to it, so it can’t even be justifiably called a “plot twist.” Also, none of the characters are very interesting. In fact, the flashback scenes with Jigsaw lack interest themselves. Finally, the movie fails to resolve some of its loose ends. The worst loose end is a scene where Jigsaw’s ex-wife receives a black box of materials from his attorney. The movie doesn’t reveal what’s in the box. Nor does the ex-wife and the box return in the final act. Once again, there’s nothing to this apparent red herring, so it doesn’t even affect the rest of the story whatsoever!

As with the other SAW movies, SAW V contains gruesome violence and lots of strong foul language. The filmmakers make little attempt to provide much suspense or excitement during their action scenes or their torture scenes. The question arises, therefore, What part of the words “thriller” and “horror” do these people not understand?