1 out of 5

Director: David Hackl

To be fair to director David Hackl, Darren Lynn Bousman committed the same copy-and-paste error with Saw II before finding his own rhythm in III and then molding it into something fresh and exciting looking for IV.  Someone else took over the reigns after Saw V, so we won’t get to know if Hackl learns a similar lesson… leaving us with the film’s boring and predictable and pointless fast edits and music stings and swirling camera nonsense, unpunctuated by moments where nothing is going on, and so must we viewers feel that nothingness via a static camera and bland framing.  The editing style, though a hallmark of the series, is best used to highlight moments of intensity.  It’s worst used when its applied just as a hallmark, something which also carries over to the gore in V – both elements feeling empty and pointless in support of the plot.  To keep kicking Hackl, what I can’t be fair on is how the production designer from films I – IV – using the budget to come up with – though increasingly ridiculous – increasingly inventive and interesting sets and designs – how this same man let such bare bones production end up in his film.  Everything sinks to B levels here, the offices and trap sets looking like a single room swapped out with desk and chairs and posters, and the camera kept tight in most instances to keep us from noticing the lack of environment.  II admittedly had a problem with this, but perhaps because the budget went to its traps.  The same might be true here, but then we’re back on the director not knowing how to capture this stuff inventively, such that the trap rooms feel rather blase and the ‘twist’ of the traps is too easily guessed.  Which could call to task the script from IV’s Melton and Dunstan… but I like how they’ve shifted the relative linearity of I – III to this odd all-happening-at-the-moment mash-up; it’s a clever Russian Dolls style of writing that keeps Jigsaw active even though he’s killed off.  Still, V is another step toward fully establishing a post-Jigsaw villain, and while Costas Mandylor does the quiet bit alright, Scott Gordon-Patterson’s rushed gruffness in IV falls apart during ‘detective’ scenes here where he uses some time off to review old crime scenes and figure out What’s Really Going On.  Thus the main crux: that V isn’t about anything new.  II was the requisite “more traps” sequel, III was a story conclusion, and IV added some history.  V is trying to sweep up loose ends, and so we really aren’t seeing any fresh aspects of the story.  The emptiness of this makes the suspension of disbelief (necessary for the series…) really difficult to muster.  To go back to being fair (-ish), if I-III were a set, then IV could be seen as a new chapter, making V the requisite suck sequel that II was.  So we’ll give it another go next Halloween to see if that holds true, eh?