Limerculer
A waste of 90 minutes of my life
Jenna Walter
The film may be flawed, but its message is not.
Janis
One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.
lorcan-61881
So,after Saw IV,Saw was over,I had kind of already experienced a boring sequel,Saw II,but it was not awful,like Saw IV and then like a god damn dream!,Saw V was released and I honestly had no intention in seeing it,in fact,I decided not to even ever bother and stick to the upcoming Friday The 13th reboot that would probably produce a few sequels to munch on,but then I heard some good reviews as well as Darren,having left after Saw IV(good enough for him),a new guy was placed in the seat who directed the film Into The Grizzly Maze,which I still haft to see. So,Saw V,what did I get? Nothing,but a 'not rememberal' sequel. OK,for example,Friday The 13th 3,I thought,was really bad,lots of people thought it was bad obviously for the awful choice of acting and effects as well as awful 3D shots but it was something I would never forget,because it was so funny,it was hilariously done,and I know it was not supposed to be,same with Halloween V and Nightmare On Elm Street 5(well,all of them actually,lol!),but Saw V,is not rememberal because it holds nothing except for like one or two awesome traps,but,its not all awful. The films characters were kind of exciting and interesting. Saw V is a OK horror film but nothing especially awesomely rememberal like Halloween V or Friday 13th 3D
zkonedog
In 2004, the original "Saw" film breathed new life into the horror movie genre. Though enticing viewers with some of the most graphic horror scenes in cinematic history, the real "hook" of the film was its morality-play plot line. Using a tact rarely taken in the annals of horror movies, Saw actually created doubt in the viewers' minds as to whether the "victims" were exactly that. Though perverse, the demented Jigsaw killer was doling out justice in a seminal way that everyone can relate to (even if it horrifies their "good side").With each subsequent film, however, that magic has been lost, little by little. While Saw II just fed off the hype of the original and didn't mess with the formula and Saw III was interesting for the "dying Jigsaw" plot line, the two most recent installments have failed to recapture that spark of the "original trilogy". Saw IV was just outright confusing, while this film suffers from two major maladies:First, the departure from the tried-and-true formula of regular citizens being tested in their weakest area. Like I said, the strength of the first few Saw movies was the writers' abilities to make audiences think about the morality of what was reality transpiring. This film, however, doesn't really take that tact and instead just focuses on clearing up all the loose ends from the fourth release. Though perhaps a noble cause for hard-core Saw fans, this line of storytelling only served to irritate me, as Saw IV was where I saw the series begin going downhill and thus didn't want to go in that direction again.The other notable departure is a moving away from the Jigsaw character. To me, Jigsaw is at the very heart of what the Saw franchise is all about, and the series really isn't active unless he is in it. The flashbacks in IV were interesting, but Jigsaw's presence in V just seemed to be an excuse to bring back Tobin Bell, not to advance the plot in any meaningful way.Thus, I see the Saw franchise as being at a paradox right now. One direction would be to continue on with the "Jigsaw lineage" and further dilute the original material (the likely path in order to please the die-hard scrutinizers), while the other, more inventive approach would be to come up with something new. Perhaps someone subjecting one of these psychopaths to their own devices?! At any rate, Saw VI will likely be the measuring stone of the "Saw future" considering the failure of this installment.
bh_tafe3
I was very unimpressed with the previous Saw film, so much so that in my review I went into no detailed plot analysis. In the case of Saw V, there is no real plot to summarize. The film attempts to explain how Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) became entangled with the Jigsaw killer.It turns out he decided to impersonate Jigsaw's method to create an unwinnable trap in order to take revenge on the man who killed his sister. Jigsaw, who somehow knew in the third movie that a woman who has never come forward witnessed a crime, uses his God powers to find out Hoffman impersonated him and tries to convert him to Jigsaw-ism. In the meantime FBI Agent Strahm (Scott Patterson) turns out to have a history with Hoffman. The dim witted Strahm gets played like a harp from hell by Hoffman and ends up getting himself crushed to death in the trash compactor from Star Wars.We also have a reasonably likable group of thinly connected victims being put through a group trap, but the script cares so little about this group, it doesn't even connect their story to the main plot. If the makers of this film don't care about this group (one of whom is Julie Benz) than neither do I.And that's this movie's biggest crime. There is no one. Absolutely no one in it that the audience is given to care about, and the film doesn't even care enough about what it's showing us to offer us the thinnest of connecting fiber between the A story and B story. Mandylor would improve in the next, but the plotting wouldn't get any smarter. I guess this can just about be satisfying if you're in the mood for a Saw film, but any time put into thinking about what this film tells you to swallow will wreck the mood pretty quickly.
GL84
After escaping from his lair, a detective begins an investigation into the connection behind the traps which leads to the true identity of Jigsaw's disciple who is out conducting another game and must race to save them before the game is finished.This one was better than the others, and right now is the one that can be tolerated more than the others. What really helps here is that there's plenty of fun and exciting traps here delivering solid and brutal gore scenes here that are certainly up among the series' best. The opening pendulum set-up is quite brutal and somewhat chilling here with the slowly-lowering blade drawing some nice tension in here, while the main game that plays out here is filled with several awesome traps and set-ups here. The opening in the room where they have the collars attached to the blades to decapitate them when the timer runs out is a fun game, the search for the keys in the jars before the bomb goes off is a nice, frantic race which is quite suspenseful, while the final two set at the end in the electrical wiring room and the razor contraption are some really impressive ones that are more important here in detailing how the game plays out which is the most impressive parts here. How they get to the gradual realization of their connection to each other makes for a really enjoyable time here which is not only given a nice reasoning but unfurls at a rather nice time here with the resolutions coming off rather well. The last plus here is the final twist which is a bit of a shock that is about as good as the first one was that manages to get several plot points tied together from the past into a fantastic effort overall. These points here hold this one up, while it's still pretty terrible. The biggest issue here with this one is a problem that's plagued the rest of the series as it's still utterly irritating and annoying as the flashbacks are just not so interesting throughout here with the continued clarifications and spelling out what happened in previous installments here being just not in the slightest bit interesting. As well, the detective investigating what we already know and taking up a ton of time on that issue alone simply combing through police files and reports is just absolutely dull as there's simply a ton of rifling around here where nothing much becomes of these scenes beyond merely confirming what's already known the whole time here by finally unveiling the true disciple here that becomes the whole point of the investigation. That's wholly boring here simply using all this time here on this one issue. The only other small flaw here is the fact that the rather lame ending to the game's set-up, which gets pushed aside to the back as the main focus shifts to the other plot-lines and feels quite a bit of a cheat considering how good the game here actually was. While this wasn't as flat-out terrible as the others, it's definitely up to a somewhat respectable status.Rated R: Extreme Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and Brief Nudity.
