movie coverI'd rather be watching TV![IMDB link] [Netflix link] The next movie in the highest-grossing horror franchise of all time is just begging to be watched.

LIMERICK REVIEW: Saw movies are not about torture; they’re about games.
People who call them “torture porn” demonstrate an understanding quite lame.
Yes, people savagely die;
Some critics don’t seem to understand why.
The ones who survive will never look at life the same.

HAIKU REVIEW: The 5th movie in–
isn’t usually the best.
So don’t be surprised.

PEOPLE: Tobin Bell as Jigsaw, and a bunch of disposable bodies. But one of them is Carlo Rota, who people should remember as Chloe’s husband/boyfriend in 24.

QUIRKS: Much like Saw 4, much of this movie happens in parallel with Saw 3. Most of the movie is a flashback. This can get confusing, but then again — Saw 4 was similarly confusing. Saw 4 and Saw 3 happened at the same time. This movie even visits all the previous Saw movies. You see them setting up the door-gun trap in Saw 2. You hear some of the screams from Saw 4 as they were happening in Saw 4. It’s definitely a bit confusing, as were Saw 3 and Saw 4. But that’s part of the point. Jigsaw’s game is so twisted, and each movie shows us how much more twisted it was than we thought.

VISUALS: Visceral disturbing imagery, as usual. But I have to say — it wasn’t as bad as some of the previous movies. The scene with the saw was pretty bad, as one can imagine. But no pits of syringes, no brain surgery, no cutting parts of your own body out to find a surgically implanted key. Still — they were pretty damn disturbing!

MORALS: “Vengeance changes a person. It can make them realize what they’re capable of.”

POLITICS: Perhaps you shouldn’t have the same police officer work on every case involving a particular series of murders.

BAD STUFF: A bit confusing. And I had trouble telling Straus apart from Hoffman, as I can’t recognize people as easily on screen. And telling them apart was very important to the plot. Overall, this wasn’t as good as the previous 4 Saw movies… But it was still damn good.

CONCLUSION: I think this is the first Saw movie I’m only giving 4 stars to on Netflix. I gave it 8/10 on IMDB. It’s good, and important to the franchise. It’s a good setup for Saw 6. We’ll see how that turns out, given that Jigsaw has been dead for 2 movies now.

RECOMMENDATION: DO NOT WATCH THIS without thoroughly reading the Wikipedia pages for Saw 1, Saw 2, Saw 3, and Saw 4. Make sure you can tell the difference between Hoffman and Straus. And THEN watch this. And watch Saw 6, which should be out as of the posting of this review (which I wrote in March).

Here’s a quick recap of Saw 1 – 3, often done comically (these are dvd extras, and the youtube videos will probably be taken down due to copyright infringement):

MOVIE QUOTE: Jigsaw: “Murder is distasteful.”
You see — Jigsaw never kills anybody. He puts them into games. They can always choose to play the game and live, but they rarely do.

FRIENDS’ RATINGS: Nobody saw this yet?!?! Not to use argumentum ad populum, buuuut… It’s the highest-grossing horror franchise ever. You’d think after making $100M that SOMEbody I know would have rated this on Netflix…

Mood: full of hamburger pie
Music: Kreator – Behind The Mirror