Director: Darren Lynn Bousmann
Year: 2021
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Torture Slasher
Plot:
Assigned to be partners together, cops who don’t like each other find themselves as the latest to investigate a series of killings that are reminiscent of the original Jigsaw killings years earlier, and the closer they get to the truth find themselves the next potential targets to be caught in
Review:
This was a rather disappointing and unremarkable genre entry. Like the majority of the franchise efforts, this one really only works with the brutality and graphicness of the traps the victims find themselves fallen into. Keeping more of a recent trend where the overall goal of the traps isn’t truly about getting out of them in order to learn a lesson but more of just cruel and graphic methods of dismembering people, there’s a rather brutal and unfair nature to the traps featured that makes the expected results at the end rather fun and impressive. With traps featuring one victim with his tongue stuck in a contraption and being forced to remove himself by tearing off his tongue before being hit by a train, another with his fingers tied together and forced to extricate himself before the fingers are all ripped off and then another is forced under a hot-wax dispenser and is forced to sever their spinal column in order to keep the wax from dripping onto their face among even more traps. This is a fun aspect of the film and really serves as the best factor here as the brutality present here serves this well enough.
There are a few major issues with this one. The main problem is the fact that we’re being forced to stay on this one cop for the majority of the investigation which is completely unrealistic or appropriate. The fact that this is a personal vendetta on several fronts, namely his history with the other officers on the force for his past behavior bringing down the corrupt officer to his struggles staying out of his father’s shadow, creates a big issue of why he’s even involved in the case to begin with. Given the personal matters already, the revelations about the victims being cops tied to him creates a major conflict of interest that would make it highly unlikely he would be allowed onto it which only serves to highlight how unappealing he is as a pretty unimpressive lead. Brash, loud, arrogant to every bit of help he gets, and determined to do it alone regardless of how out of his element he is. This really makes it hard to follow him throughout the investigation.
Sill, what makes the investigation even harder to follow is how underwhelming and uninspired it really is. The whole concept of the killer’s identity being a mystery to figure out is a complete joke with the idea being telegraphed from the moment the character appears on-screen and we get their initial interactions with other characters in a manner that highlights who they’ll become later on. As well, the amount of time spent on trying to figure this out from the clues left at the crime scenes or the interactions on the police force comes off with the intensity of a police procedural series on a random television show, barely taking hunches or guesswork and essentially just being lucky that what he’s doing with strange objects in the station or other pieces of technology aren’t corrupting the system like they easily could’ve. To hand this off at the expense of traps or anything else relegated to the franchise’s past is a major factor when it’s barely focused on these traps, all of which hold this one down the most.
Overview: */5
An okay enough entry that works only in regards to the brutality present in the traps, the fact that so much of this one is undone by the lackluster writing and other factors that are far more prominent leave this one quite lacking. It might be fine for those who are looking for something different than the past franchise entries or might find this style enjoyable, but most others should heed caution with this one.
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