‘Jigsaw’ Review Roundup: Nothing New To Offer In Seventh ‘Saw’ Sequel

The Saw spinoff Jigsaw is receiving poor reviews from critics, earning just a 52% on Rottentomatoes. The Michael and Peter Spierig directed movie stands at just 91 minutes long, and features the face of Saw‘s Jigsaw killer. The film follows law enforcement as they chase the ghost of a dead man, John Kramer, the Jigsaw killer, who supposedly died over a decade ago, and become embroiled in a new game. Matt Passmore, Callum Keith Rennie, Clé Bennett and Laura Vandervoort star in this Halloween film.

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JIGSAW REVIEW ROUNDUP

“‘How are you still alive?’ a character screams to the titular villain in Jigsaw, the eighth installment of the hugely successful horror franchise. The answer, of course is obvious. He’s still alive because there’s money to be made… Considering the long amount of time since the last installment, you’d think that more effort would have been put into creatively reviving the franchise. But Jigsaw just seems rote and mechanical, with long stretches of its running time feeling like a police procedural or CSI spinoff… Genre fans will be satisfied by the copious amounts of gore on display, with the viscera looking particularly impressive when blown up to IMAX film proportions.”
–Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter

“This is the first movie that actually looks sort of expensive, and it trades the sickening green color palette of the first seven efforts for actual daylight… the kills and mutilations look fantastic, and it’s nice to know that after all these years and all these deaths, watching someone melt from the inside out after being injected with hydrofluoric acid can still be shocking. It’s also got a pretty good sense of humor sometimes, which is a nice new feature. Saw still has the power to shock, but it’s also a little less self-serious. The seventh sequel is not an unwelcome entry, but it does hang around the low-middle of the pack.”
–Jordan Crucchiola, Vulture

“You will hate Jigsaw if you approach it like a regular puzzle, and go in expecting its creators to give you enough pieces to complete their already corny puzzle without some amount of creative overcompensating. But, while I can’t exactly recommend seeing Jigsaw, I can tell you that it’s fun to watch. I just don’t think it’s the kind of fun the filmmakers’ planned… Throw in a lot of ineptly sensationalistic filmmaking, specifically too-dark camera filters, over-edited action sequences, and heavy-handed monologues about how people don’t really appreciate life until they’ve almost died. Then include, on top of that, a bunch of rug-pulling twists, and seven sequels’ worth of backstory, related primarily through abrupt flashbacks, and unwieldy expository dialogue. And voila, you have a screw-up-proof recipe for a bunch of abnormally dimwitted grand guignol-style thrillers, all of which are built on a narrative foundation of wobbly, retroactively planned mythmaking. These movies are so overdone that you can’t help but marvel at their creators’ aggressive, and clueless attempts at simultaneously alienating you and drawing you in.”
–Simon Abrams, rogerebert.com

“The directing Spierig Brothers keep Jigsaw moving briskly enough and don’t wallow in mean-spiritedness in the manner of some previous entries. But neither are they able to rally much rooting interest in these bland characters, or to achieve the bottom-line goal of any horror film: Despite its meticulously detailed gore, Jigsaw is rarely scary.”
–Michael Gingold, Time Out New York