Director: David Hackl
Stars: Tobin Bell, Costas Mandylor, Scott Patterson, Betsy Russell, Julie Benz, Meagan Good, Mark Rolston, Carlo Rota
Strahm (Patterson) tracks Jigsaw’s apprentice, Hoffman (Mandylor) while another group of people undergo one a deadly game.
I don’t think I’ve reviewed any of the Saw movies on this blog. I actually used to hate any kind of horror movie, but I’ve come to enjoy them and I do enjoy this franchise, although it’s not without its missteps. I find the twists entertaining and the games are usually inventive, in a very grisly way. I watched the first four films a few years ago and I’ve only now gotten around to finishing off the franchise, so my memory of the details was a bit hazy, and it took a little while to get things straight in my head. Saw V is pretty dense with its flashbacks, and at times it was unclear whether things were happening in the present or the past. That may not have been a problem had I watched them all close together, but after the long break I took it was a little jarring.
As for the film itself there’s two main plots and they don’t intersect. The cat and mouse game between Strahm and Hoffman is interesting but given how disjointed it feels because of the flashbacks I couldn’t get fully involved in it, although the ending is gruesome and great. The main game features a favorite of mine – Julie Benz, but the twist is predictable and it doesn’t really go anywhere. It almost feels like it’s there just to fill up time, so it wasn’t exactly a triumphant return to the series. But it did feel less gratuitous and it felt like it wanted to have more of a plot than mere scenes of torture, it just so happened that the plot was a bit rubbish.