Be Reel: Jigsaw

Last weekend me and my friends saw Jigsaw at AMC, and it did to us exactly what we thought it would do. The thing about the Saw movies is that once you have a grasp of the situation, a plot twist quickly changes that. In an attempt to avoid spoilers, I will spare the details of the aforementioned plot twist. The movie involved just about every quality that makes a horror movie scary. For example, a low lighting key was spread throughout almost every scene, which combined with the general darkness of the theater to punish the audience with a constant eerie tone. Five people were abducted and put into a barn to experience a variety of traps because of horrible things they did in their past. John Kramer, the mastermind behind the identity of Jigsaw, knew exactly how the puzzle would play out because he set it up, but personally speaking as a member of the audience, I had no idea what was coming. The fear he put into the people undergoing his test created suspense every step of the way. The dominant feature in many of the scenes in the movie is blood, which is used to instill fear in the audience and keep the eerie tone alive. The choices made in the plot, for example the police hunt of Jigsaw and the huge plot twist with an unexpected villain, carry out the goal of the Saw series, so it is vital that these tactics were used. The director had great success in many objective aspects of the movie, including setting, which was a creepy barn at night, characters, choosing unsuspecting victims that fit the traditional Saw victim portrait, and plot, including a plot twist that very few people could predict.

As for my own opinion on the movie, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Everything I hoped to see, I saw. The traps set by Jigsaw were even more intricate than ever, and were so gruesome that some parts were hard to watch. Every step of the way, I was trying to predict what was coming next or the ending or whatever I saw fit, and for the record I did correctly predict three things regarding what actually happened when a Jigsaw trick was carried out. Even though I probably went 3/40 with my guesses, it kept me very much into the film. Every Saw movie is designed to really make you think, and that constant thinking kept me and my friends intrigued. I loved not knowing what was coming, especially when I thought I figured out the puzzle and got proved wrong every time. In the end, the plot twist left me with my jaw hanging as the credits rolled, and my friends and I just couldn’t believe what we just witnesses, even though we were expecting it the entire time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPP6aIw1vgY

This link contains the Jigsaw trailer, which accurately displays the horrifying concept of a police hunt after a man presumed dead, exerting an eerie tone foreshadowing misfortune and chaos.