Saw V
Director: David Hackl
Writer: Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan
Sequel to: Saw, Saw II, Saw III, Saw IV
Cast: Tobin Bell, Costas Mandylor, Scott Patterson, Betsy Russell, Julie Benz, Meagan Good, Mark Rolston, Tony Nappo
Seen on: 26./27.9.2025

Plot:
After Jigsaw’s (Tobin Bell) death, Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) is celebrated as the great hero and Agent Strahm (Scott Patterson) is gravely wounded. The police mourn their fallen in Jigsaw’s pursuit and Jigsaw’s ex-wife Jill (Betsy Russell) inherits a box from him. Despite everything, Jigsaws traps continue with five people fighting for their survival. As Strahm grows more and more suspicious of Hoffman, time is runnning out yet again.

Saw V keeps up the quality of the films before it, though it would be time for a raise in quality to really justify the fact there is yet another sequel.

Saw V seems to have realized an increasing problem in the series: the elaborate traps only work if people behave exactly the way they behave. If anybody makes a different choice, suddenly nothing works anymore. And instead of really grappling with this and maybe trying to, you know, write better traps, we are given half a line of Jigsaw just having this perfect knowledge of people, so he can predict everything. Come now, this is just childish and ridiculous.

I am also increasingly annoyed by everything coming with a timer and very short time-frames. Give people time to make their decisions, let them really think about it, let them grapple. But then, the filmmakers seem convinced that the interesting thing about the movies is Jigsaw (and whoever Jigsaw’s successor is) and not trying to come to terms with a moral dilemma or changing a very fundamental thing about yourself.

There is still a tiny hope in me that the next films might start to see things more my way and move away from the police side of things (although Strahm is the first character I regret not seeing again), but that hope is very fleeting by now.

But none of this is really new. I do believe that the Saw movies so far are some of the most consistent films in terms of creative vision and quality. It’s just a pity that the quality they are keeping up just isn’t particularly good.

Summarizing: oh well, what can I say.