Jigsaw is a 2017 American horror film directed by Michael and Peter Spierig, written by Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger, and starring Matt Passmore, Callum Keith Rennie, Clé Bennett, and Hannah Emily Anderson. It is the eighth installment in the Saw franchise, picking up over a decade after the death of the eponymous Jigsaw killer, during the police investigation of a new succession of murders that fit his modus operandi. Saw 3D (2010) was originally deemed the final installment of the series, before Lionsgate Films commissioned the production of Jigsaw from a pitch by Stolberg and Goldfinger.
Filming began in November 2016, with post-production following in January. The film was released in the United States on October 27, 2017, received generally unfavorable reviews from critics, and grossed $102.9 million worldwide.
Video Jigsaw (2017 film)
Plot
Criminal Edgar Munsen is pursued by the police onto a rooftop, where he activates a triggering mechanism before being shot non-fatally by Police Detective Halloran and his fellow officers.
Five people are held captive in a barn, each with a metal noose around their neck. A tape recording from John Kramer explains they must give a sacrifice of blood and will need to confess their sins. The chains begin pulling them towards a wall of buzzsaws. Four manage to survive by cutting themselves on the blades as an offering of blood, but one man who was unconscious during the majority of the game appears to die.
The next test divulges that group member Carly caused the death of an asthmatic woman by stealing her purse, which had her emergency inhaler inside. To save the others from being hanged, she must inject herself with one of the three needles- one containing an antidote to a poison in her system, one a saline solution, and one a potent acid. Volatile group member Ryan eventually stabs Carly with all three to save himself, melting her face and killing her.
Detectives Halloran and Hunt begin investigating the discovery of bodies that appear to belong to the unnamed man and Carly. Halloran becomes suspicious of forensic pathologists Logan, a veteran and former doctor whose wife was killed two years prior, and Eleanor. Munsen is kidnapped from the hospital by an unseen assailant. When the police commissioner orders Kramer's grave be exhumed, Munsen's dead body is found inside instead.
Ryan tries escaping through a door marked "No Exit", and is trapped by wires that ensnare his leg. Fellow group members Anna and Mitch discover an unlocked door, and are trapped inside a grain silo. A taped message explains they will be buried in grain and killed by falling debris unless Ryan pulls a lever that will free him from the wires around his leg. Anna and Mitch survive, but Ryan's leg is severed when he pulls the lever.
Logan and Eleanor speak about their mutual distrust of Halloran. Eleanor takes Logan to her "studio" where she reveals that she is an obsessive fangirl of the Jigsaw case, and has built replicas of Kramer's traps. She's worried her obsession might incriminate her. Detective Hunt has followed them, and informs Halloran of the studio.
The next test reveals Mitch knowingly sold a motorcycle with a faulty brake to Kramer's nephew, resulting in his death. Mitch will be lowered into a spiral-shaped blade unless he can reach for a brake lever. Though fellow group-member Anna attempts to help him, he is shredded by the blade and killed.
Halloran calls for Eleanor and Logan's arrest after a corpse appearing to belong to Mitch is discovered in the studio. Logan convinces Hunt to let them go, as both suspect Halloran to be responsible. Eleanor has deduced the game's location, and she and Logan depart for the barn. Halloran pursues them. Meanwhile, Hunt finds puzzle-piece shaped pieces of human flesh in Halloran's freezer, fitting Jigsaw's M.O. and implicating Halloran as a copycat killer.
Anna attempts to slip through a doorway to freedom, only to be captured. She finds herself and Ryan chained in a room with a hooded figure, who is revealed to be a still-living John Kramer. Kramer reveals that Anna suffocated her infant in a fit of rage and blamed it on her sleeping husband by planting the body next to him. Her husband later committed suicide, thinking he accidentally smothered his own baby. It is also revealed that Ryan accidentally caused the death of several of his friends years prior in a car accident but managed to escape blame. Kramer tells them they have gotten his message "backwards". He places a loaded shotgun between them and tells them it is the "key" to their survival. Anna attempts to shoot Ryan, but the gun, which is revealed to be rigged, backfires and instead kills her. Ryan realizes that the keys to his and Anna's chains were in the gun, and destroyed when Anna pulled the trigger, leaving no hope of escape.
Logan and Eleanor investigate the barn, but are ambushed by Halloran. Eleanor escapes, and Halloran is drugged by an unseen assailant.
Logan and Halloran awaken in collars rigged with laser cutters. They are told they must confess their sins to survive and may choose who goes first. Halloran forces Logan to go first. Logan confesses that he mislabeled Kramer's X-Rays years prior, which caused his cancer to go undiagnosed until it was too late. Despite confessing, Logan appears to die. Halloran is tested next. He admits to having allowed criminals to walk free for personal gain, and his collar deactivates.
Suddenly Logan stands, revealing that he faked his death in order to get Halloran to confess, and that the barn game in fact took place ten years ago. He was the man who appeared to die in the first game, but Kramer, feeling he should not die because of an honest mistake, saved him and recruited him. The bodies that were found were actually the bodies of criminals Halloran allowed to walk free. Logan placed them into the same tests that he was meant to face ten years prior. Logan also reveals that Munsen, one of the criminals Halloran let go, was responsible for murdering his wife. However, because Halloran didn't confess all of his sins, and broke the rules to force Logan to go first, he will die and be framed as the Jigsaw copycat killer. Logan reactivates the laser-collar around Halloran's neck and his head is sliced apart, killing him. Having succeeded in his plan, Logan declares that he speaks for the dead.
Maps Jigsaw (2017 film)
Cast
- Matt Passmore as Logan Nelson
- Callum Keith Rennie as Det. Halloran
- Clé Bennett as Det. Keith Hunt
- Hannah Emily Anderson as Eleanor Bonneville
- Laura Vandervoort as Anna
- Paul Braunstein as Ryan
- Mandela Van Peebles as Mitch
- Brittany Allen as Carly
- Josiah Black as Edgar Munsen
- Shaquan Lewis as Officer Solomon
- Michael Boisvert as Lee James
- Tobin Bell as John Kramer / Jigsaw
Production
Development
Saw 3D was intended to be the final Saw film. The film was set to be split into two parts, but Lionsgate Films only allowed the filmmakers to make one more film after Saw VI under-performed at the box office. According to Saw 3D writers Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, because of the change, "the big reveal of Dr. Gordon was a bit underserved ... perhaps creating more questions than answers. There were several ideas [we] never quite figured out. But [I] don't want to say what they were, because you never know what might happen in the future."
After the intended conclusion, Lionsgate ceased making Saw films, while waiting to hear a pitch that they thought made it worthwhile to resurrect the series. Jigsaw was conceived when writers Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger, who had spent two years pursuing the opportunity to write a Saw entry, proposed their vision. It became known in July 2016 that brothers Michael and Peter Spierig would direct the film. The producers Mark Burg and Oren Koules had also produced the previous entries in the Saw series. Composer Charlie Clouser has described the film as a "reinvention" of the series, opining that "the Spierig brothers can deliver a fresh take on the material that will establish a new story line and new characters that can carry the saga into the future." The directors further detailed their approach as being "Saw for 2017", and Michael Spierig explained, "It's perhaps not quite as vicious, and more fun. But it's still full of gore, that's for sure. It's got a really great mystery, and there are very interesting twists."
Filming
In October 2016, production was confirmed to have commenced under the working title of Saw: Legacy. The film was shot in November 2016, and entered post-production by January. On March 2, 2017, Bloody Disgusting revealed the first plot details and a full actor list, confirming that Tobin Bell would return in the role of John Kramer. In June 2017, the Motion Picture Association of America listed the film under the official title of Jigsaw, rating it R, for "sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture, and for language". On August 14, 2017, the film passed uncut in the United Kingdom with an 18 Certificate by the BBFC. In regard to the new title, writer Josh Stolberg clarified that "when a writer is writing a movie, they put something on the cover page to separate it from other films. So when we were writing this film, the title read Saw: Legacy but it was never official or 'decided'."
Marketing
Poster releases
On September 16, 2017, Lionsgate released five posters to promote Jigsaw. The posters show off people in the traditional Billy the Puppet makeup, captioned "He is Everything. He is Everywhere. He is Everyone". The release of the posters was Lionsgate's way of reasserting the series' dominance over the Halloween season.
Halloween Blood Drive
The Annual Blood Drive is the series' tradition, where before the release of the films in October, mobile blood stations are set up around the United States, where fans who donate blood receive a free ticket to see the respective film of that year. The tradition started in 2004, after the overwhelming success of Saw, and continued for each of the sequels until it stopped in 2009 before the release of Saw VI. Due to the arrival of Jigsaw in October, the blood drive was revived for another year, promoting the film with eight posters released by Lionsgate, featuring "Nurses" Grae Drake, Dan Rockwell, Susanne Bartch, Nyakim Gatwech, Shaun Dross, Mosh, Mykie and Amanda LePore.
As of September 2017, 120,000 pints (57,000 L) of blood had been donated, which has led to over 360,000 lives being saved.
Music
Charlie Clouser, who provided the score for all previous entries in the Saw series, returned to score Jigsaw. Clouser re-imagined the music of the Saw franchise, following the six-year hiatus between Saw 3D and Jigsaw. Clouser stated in 2016, "this will be an opportunity [for me] to re-imagine how [I] approach the score, and [I] will be trying a more stark, bold, and stripped-down approach that will be more in line with the strong vision that the Spierig brothers are bringing to the table."
Release
Jigsaw was released in the United Kingdom on October 26, 2017, and in the United States theatrically on October 27, 2017. It was featured in IMAX screenings for the first week of its theatrical run.
Box office
Jigsaw has grossed $38.1 million in the United States and Canada, and $64.9 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $102.9 million, against a production budget of $10 million.
In the United States and Canada, Jigsaw was released alongside Thank You for Your Service and Suburbicon, and is projected to gross around $20 million from 2,941 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $1.6 million from Thursday night previews at 2,400 theaters, just below the $1.7 million Saw 3D made from midnight screenings seven years prior, and $7.2 million on its first day. It went on to open to $16.64 million, finishing first at the box office but marking the second lowest debut of the franchise. In its second weekend the film dropped 61% to $6.56 million, finishing third behind newcomers Thor: Ragnarok and A Bad Moms Christmas. In its third weekend, the film dropped another 47% and made $3.43 million, finishing fifth.
Critical response
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 34% based on 74 reviews, with an average rating of 4.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Jigsaw definitely won't win many converts to the Saw franchise, but for longtime fans, it should prove a respectably revolting--if rarely scary--diversion." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film holds a weighted average score of 39 out of 100, based on 18 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.
IGN gave the film a score of 4.5/10, writing "The good news is, Jigsaw is not the worst horror movie of the year. The bad news is, it's still bad enough that that's the good news...[It] doesn't capture what made the Saw franchise work in the first place." Darren French of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "C", calling it disappointing and overly long. Bloody Disgusting gave the film two and a half out of five, saying the film "while being a fun ride, fails to justify its existence with a story that is overly familiar and a twist that doesn't live up to most of its predecessors."
Variety's Owen Gleiberman found the film "garishly rote" saying "For 92 minutes, it more or less succeeds in sawing through your boredom, slicing and dicing with a glum explicitness that raises the occasional tingle of gross-out suspense but no longer carries any kick of true shock value." io9 largely panned the film saying "[it] is one of the better films in the franchise. Unfortunately, that's not saying much."
Home media
Jigsaw was released digitally on January 9, 2018 and on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD on January 23, 2018.
Sequel
On January 16, 2018, Lionsgate were reported to have begun discussing a ninth installment in which the Spierig brothers would not be returning.
See also
- List of horror films of the 2010s
References
External links
- Official website
- Jigsaw on IMDb
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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