Director: Darren Lynn Bousman

Budget: $4million

Box Office: $147.7million

• We open with a guy who wakes up having to look at something truly awful: his own face in a mirror. Oh, he’s also got a mask in his face which is like a small iron maiden, for the face.
• The TV showing the puppet is set to channel 3. I know ITV are struggling but weird they show this.
• Jigsaws reason for killing this guy? He was an informant. Damn, snitches get stitches, yo.
• The editing for this scene is disorientating. And not in a good way. In a “I’m not sure the editors knew what they were doing” way. It doesn’t flow, just random interjections into a standard shot. It makes it look like the DVD is broken.
• And he’s dead, is telling the police about criminal behaviour really on a par with some of the other stuff he kills people for?
• Hey it’s Donnie Wahlberg, proving exactly why he’s not the famous one.
• “your mother won custody, I get to take you into custody” You can tell the writer was so proud of that.
• “crackhead punks don’t have engineering degrees” I don’t think you’d need a degree to make that contraption. You’d need to know what you’re doing, yeah. But really all it is is a spring-mounted closing mechanism on a metal mask.
• So he figures out who it is because of the company that made the lock? I guess in the Saw universe people don’t buy anything from companies they don’t work for.
• For a specialised SWAT team, these guys are not smart. They go into a house and don’t check for wires. Did they not see the last movie when the guy got a shotgun to the face?
• They tripped a wire and something happened, I genuinely have no idea what though as the way it’s filmed means you can’t tell what happened.
• Somehow they still managed to find Jigsaw. Which considering how dumb these guys are is surprising.
• “put him in restraints” you find a serial killer and your first thought is to have a hardcore bondage session?
• Jigsaw tells Donnie he needs to go into the other room, and he actually does it, because he has no idea how people who make traps work.
• “oh yes, there will be blood” Hey, that’s the title of…..well not this movie, but a movie.
• “he’s in a safe space” Hah, he’s literally in a safe. Wait, that isn’t revealed until the end though. So ignore I said that.
• Jigsaw even changed the voice message on Donnie’s sons (Daniel) phone. Now I’m going to spoil this by pointing out that the scene in the house has already happened before what we’re seeing now. So if anybody tried to phone him for the entire duration of the house-thing, it wouldn’t have worked.
• Oh right, the house. Daniel and a group of other people have just woken up in what looks like a crack house (or my first year uni house).
• “What is this, house arrest?” Yes, because the typical way the police give you house arrest is to drug you and throw you in a derelict house with a group of other people. Wait, is this movie in Texas? If so that’s probably accurate.
• All these people are a mix of different race and personality. And one old guy. I think he’s going to die early on.
• They’re all shocked when a seemingly unconscious woman (Amanda, the drug addict from the first movie) wakes up. I’m more shocked they didn’t notice an unconscious woman laying in the middle of the floor.
• Why has she been kidnapped again? She said he saved her in the last movie. So why would he go after her? Unless……she’s in on it (spoilers, she is)
• “this house has a nerve agent pumped through it. Those of you familiar with the Tokyo subway attack will know of its danger”. First of, nobody knows about that attack. Nobody. Secondly, that attack killed 12 people, yes, but on an entire subway line over course of a day that’s not that many really.
• “what did he mean gas?” He didn’t say gas, he said nerve agent.
• This trap would not have worked if someone wasn’t looking through the peep-hole whilst the door was being opened.
• “how do you know who’s doing this?” Does nobody in these films watch the news? Or even just hear rumours.
• “if we don’t find my son, I’ll hurt you” “bitch I got cancer, my life is pain” Not a direct quote.
• “the puzzle piece I cut from people is only a symbol that they’re missing something”. This is bullshit. I know the movie (and for some reason, a lot of the “fans” of the character) see him as a source of righteousness, but his reasons for going after people are sometimes so flimsy. “He’s a police informant”. I’d have thought you would want police informants if you’re so high up on justice punishing those who do wrong. Same with “he takes photos”.
• “the only door you open is between your legs”. That’s not a door. FFS someone please explain the vagina to him. Show videos.
• “you’re the last person I saw before I woke up here”. How do you know? Your back was to him the entire time.
• Oh no, the kidnapper and arsonist died. Oh dear.
• Amanda (you know, the woman who is almost definitely in on this) says “he had a choice”. Did he? Did he, really? He was pushed into it, and only died when he was getting the second valve of antidote. If he just got the one for himself and used it, he’d have been fine. So really the lesson is “don’t try to save others”
• Next trap: a pit of needles with a key in it somewhere. Xavier (who until this point has done nothing really) decides to throw Amanda in it. Because he’s a dick. This film is REALLY trying to build up Amanda as a sympathetic character so that the reveal does more damage. Tip for horror movies: if there’s a really sympathetic female character; she kills people. Goes for The Gallows, Scream 4, and this.
• “what are you in here for?” “does it matter?” Well, it kind of does for character motivation etc. Could the writers just not think of anything?
• So the reason that Jigsaw is going after Donnie is that he’s a crooked cop who arrests people without evidence. Would be a stronger justification if it wasn’t for the fact that Jigsaw was killing people for doing things that aren’t illegal.
• Xavier figures out that the combination to get out is on the back of their heads. So decides to use a knife to slice the numbers off the back of peoples necks (including his own), rather than, you know, just lining them up and reading them.
• He’s now killed, erm, Dave? Mike? I don’t know his name, the black guy. He killed him by using a spiked baseball bat and hitting him in the back of the neck with it. You know, the same area where the number that he needs is.
• Now we find out what bonds them; they’ve all been wrongfully convicted by the same cop, apart from the kid who’s his son. Yeah, that will show them the error of their evil ways. How dare they get wrongfully arrested, they should know better. And how dare he be somebody’s son. That totally justifies his death.
• Jigsaw takes them to the house, and it turns out to be the same house from the first movie. Nice callback, but the voiceovers of the characters really weren’t needed, you should depend on people recognising it by itself. This seems like they weren’t confident people remembered the first film. They go the complete opposite later on in the series, and you start to actually study ever film in the series due to how many characters they re-use in minor parts.
• None of the cops are visible on the cameras, and nobody seems to realise this might be because of tape delay.
• Okay now they’ve figured it out, it was being played on VHS. The scariest of all ways. Donny continues looking for his son and finds a lot of the bodies from earlier on in the film.
• He finds a tape-recorder where we find out that Amanda was in on it all the time. What a surprise that nobody saw coming. It would have made more sense if his son was involved instead in a protest against his fathers methods.
• We now have a 2-3 minute sequence where they explain the ending, in case you’re too stupid to realise.
• “game over” and with that she shuts the door on him forever! Well, until the team that knows where he is finds him anyway.

So, not a terrible film but the sins of later movies are starting to show: the over-complicated plotting that is somehow still too simple, the bland characters, the terrible editing techniques.