Movie - Saw V (2008)

And so it goes on to the fifth one. This one once again I was disappointed in much like the fifth one. I think the most disappointing feature is that now that Jigsaw is gone, his successor does not carry the puzzles the way that Jigsaw did. He does not really design the tests so that they have an actual chance of getting out and learning, he just kills them in cold blood. So the movie starts off with a pretty gruesome trap that has the man who murdered Hoffman's sister in it. This one is called the pendulum as there is a very large blade swinging above his midsection threatening to cut him in half if he does not smash his hands in the vices. Though he follows the direction and smashes his hands, the pendulum still saws him in half. This is what I meant by not letting them learn their lesson and killing them anyway. Strahm is attacked and wakes up with his head in a glass box which soon starts filling with water. He barely escapes when he grabs his pen and punctures his throat with it, releasing air so he can breathe. Jigsaw's ex wife is given a box and a note from Jigsaw from his lawyer and seeks the aid of Strahm's boss advising she thinks he is following her. His boss takes him off the case and Strahm confronts Hoffman to tell him that he suspects him to be involved with Jigsaw.

Five people wake up in a sewer attached to the same cable. If one person goes to far on the cable, the others are pulled back into a blade that will sever their head. The timer starts and they only have limited time to run forward and get the key to their collars. All but one person makes the time and one person loses their head.

Strahm does some digging and finds out the truth about the person killed with the pendulum and puts two and two together. Angry that Hoffman staged the murder pretending to be him, Jigsaw kidnaps him and threatens to blackmail him if he does not swear to work for him moving forward (this is a flashback by the way).


The next trap set up for the five in the sewer is for them to smash glass jars above their head in order to find keys to shelters to hide them from a bomb that will explode in a certain amount of time. The group starts fighting for the keys and one man goes down during the blast. In the next room, five cords must be connected to create a full circuit to open the next door. The group realizes the cords are not long enough to reach each other and must be connected by their bodies. One of the girls is stabbed in the neck to be sacrified and thrown into a bathtub. Once all cords are connected to her, the door opens. The last test is one of blood. The remaining two must stick their hands into a saw and fill up a glass full of blood to pass. It is here that they realize that all five people could have made it through the tests with minimal pain but instead there were only two of them left. The blades end up cutting their hands in half all the way up to about their elbows (they show the one guy's hand afterwards and it is just so awesome looking). I don't think I could have done it. I probably would have just let myself die which by the looks of it, both people looked like they either did or were close to dying anyway. They make it, but I'm not sure they live (they don't really say).


Hoffman places decoy evidence to incriminate Strahm as the Jigsaw apprentice and his boss puts out an all points bulletin on him. Strahm confronts Hoffman and pushes him into a coffin of glass that was originally meant for him. The coffin closes and starts to lower into the floor as the doors lock all around him. When the walls start closing in, Strahm realizes that he is trapped. The movie closes with Strahm being crushed to death while Hoffman watches from his coffin of safety.


So this movie was okay. Once again I am not really a fan of the franchise now that Jigsaw is gone. I felt like he was the deal because he actually provided real tests and everything was just so planned out perfectly that there was really no way he could ever be caught. He was the man in the movies and now that Hoffman is in charge it's just not as good. I gave this one a three for being pretty good.

Movie - Saw IV (2007)

So Jigsaw is now dead but his games are far from being over. Apparently I saw this movie in theaters when it first came out (I still have the movie stub), but I don't really remember seeing any of it so obviously a re-watch was in order. The movie follows one of the detectives (Riggs) and his obsessive pursuit to find the detective who was locked in the bathroom in the second movie. We were kind of wondering what happened to him, weren't we? Due to his obsession with trying to save everyone, he is immediately a target for one of Jigsaw's puzzles. Riggs wakes up in his own apartment, but it has been turned into a Jigsaw puzzle. His first test is a prostitute who is in a contraption that will slowly rip her scalp off of her head by pulling her hair. Riggs has to leave her and pursue his real mission but cannot due to his obsession with saving everyone. He saves the girl just in time, but she has her own puzzle to solve and tries to kill him, but ultimately loses her own life. The next test takes him to a motel where he must choose to leave a rapist be or have him strap himself into a machine and stab his own eyes out. He chooses to have him strap himself in and the man loses his life as chains rip him to pieces at the last minute. The next test brings him to a school where he sees a wife and husband impaled together held up on a divider. The wife has murdered the husband by removing all but one of the metal rods. Riggs helps her remove the rod and helps her down. While being interrogated by police officials, Jill (Jigsaw's ex wife) explains to them why she feels he became the way that he did. It is uncovered that she was pregnant and that a junky held her at gunpoint at her clinic and slammed a door into her stomach causing her to miscarry. Enraged by what happened, Jigsaw was never the same. Later it is shown that that man was Jigsaw's first guinea pig. Riggs finally gets to his detective friend, but it is too late. When he opens the door, he is shot by his friend (Matthews) just as ice blocks fall down and shatter Matthews' head, killing him instantly. As Riggs is dying, his fellow detective Hoffman reveals himself to be Jigsaw's apprentice. Just as Strahm (another detective) is about to walk through to the scene, Hoffman locks him in a room full of the corpses from the third movie and he is trapped. This movie was okay. I was a little confused as they kept hopping from the past to the present to the future and it was kind of confusing when everything was happening. There really weren't that many traps or gore in this one so I was a little disappointed. This movie did answer some questions about where people were and who was going to take over now that both Amanda and Jigsaw were dead, but it was really just disappointing compared to the other three. I'm going to give this one a three.

Movie - Saw III (2006)

Okay so here is the third movie in the Saw series and my favorite out of all of them so far. This is unfortunately as far as I've ever gotten watching them. I don't have a reason why I stopped watching them, but I believe I just got too busy or forgot about them. Looking back, I would have liked to see them all in theater and am kind of bummed I didn't continue going to see them. But hey at least I'm watching them all now, right? The movies so far have followed the steady decline of Jigsaw's health and in this one he is at an all time low. With the help of Amanda, a well known doctor is kidnapped and forced to help Jigsaw recover. Her neck is rigged with a device which will kill her if he dies forcing her to help him with minor surgery to feel better. Another trap is going on as well as a man who lost his son goes through a series of tests to forgive the people who caused his son's death. I am going to go ahead and explain the tests because they were just awesome. The first test houses the woman who witnessed the accident and kept quiet about it rather than stepping forward and testifying to put the killer in jail. The woman is hung naked in a freezer and sprayed with freezing cold water until she ultimately freezes to death. Jeff, the man going through the tests, gets the key to free her after she is already frozen which is kind of stupid because it's really obvious that it's already too late. So we can keep this blog rated so kiddies can read it, I won't include a picture of that one. The second test houses the judge who only sentenced the killer to six months in prison. He is locked by his neck to the bottom of a vat where old rotten pigs are ground up and the guts spilled all over him. Over time the vat fills up and could possibly drown him. In order to save the judge, Jeff burns his son's cherished belongings. I think this one was my favorite just by how gross and gory it was. Can you even imagine how it much feel to be drowning in rotting pig guts? That's just... I can't... I just can't.
Pretty gross fact, but after watching "The Props of Saw III" on the blu-ray, they said that they used REAL maggots on the pigs when they threw them down. Talk about disgusting! The third and final test is the most important one of all. He faces the murderer of his child. The machine that he is hooked up to twists his limbs until they bust. Jeff watches as one by one of the killer's arms and legs are broken. At the pleas of the judge, he reaches into a trap designed to shoot him to get the key to save him only he accidentally shoots the judge in the face and kills him. Once again, Jeff decides to be noble too late and the man dies. This was a really gory part and I loved it. I highly recommend taking a look at the Traps and Props of Saw III if you get the chance on the DVDs or on YouTube if it's on there because the way they make the traps and prosthetics is just really interesting. I wanted to note on this part, why didn't the judge just get the key and save him if he was so worried? Technically he let him die too which I guess he payed for since he got shot in the face.

Okay so let's just say Jeff has an anger problem and has completely failed all of his tests. That's safe to assume, correct? So the final twist comes at the end. This was never a test for the doctor, this whole thing was actually set up to test Amanda to make sure she could carry on his legacy. Well let's just say Amanda failed her test too. So Amanda shoots the doctor just as Jeff walks through the door not knowing that she is actually Jeff's wife. Eraged by this, Jeff kills Amanda. Jigsaw offers him one last chance at redemption by giving him the chance to forgive him for the pain that he has caused him and his family and that he will let him go and call an ambulance to save his wife. Not knowing that his wife's life is still attached to Jigsaw's, he murders him and also his wife on accident. Just as Jigsaw is dying, he plays a tape for him letting Jeff know he is to play one last game to find his daughter which Jigsaw has hidden. This movie had so many twists and crazy puzzles, it was really just everything I could hope for in a Saw movie. In one of the special features the directors said that this movie really was made for the fans because they used everything that the fans had asked for in the movie which is awesome. One last thing I forgot to mention was the trap that the female detective lost her life in at the beginning. This was a really great opener for the movie in my opinion and when I had seen that in theaters I was just in awe over the beauty of the machine. I gave this one a five.

Movie - Saw II (2005)

Here we have the second installation of the Saw series right after the first which in my opinion is the best way to watch movies like this. This movie leaves the characters from the first movie and follows a detective who is searching for Jigsaw to solve the murders. Once he has him cornered and is finally about to bring him in, Jigsaw reveals that he has kidnapped his son and that the only way to get him back is by just sitting down and talking to him until the timer runs out. On the video screen, he watches as his son is pitted against some of the criminals he framed and sent to jail. Too impatient to sit and talk with Jigsaw, he takes matters into his own hands by becoming very rough with Jigsaw and forcing him to take him to where his son is being held on the video. Once he gets to the building, the viewers then realize that the video they had been watching was a recording and was not something currently going on. The timer buzzes and a safe within Jigsaw's hideout opens to reveal the detective's son alive. The detective, however, has been tricked and is jumped by one of Jigsaw's assistants (Amanda) and trapped in the basement. The movie gets you again with the great twists in the ending that you don't expect. I liked this one just as much as the first one and gave this a four as well. Really great sequel.

Movie - Saw (2004)

So it's that time where I marathon watch a whole series of a movie. In this case I am running through the Saw movies (all of them in a row since I just bought them all on BluRay). I actually haven't seen this movie since it originall came out (yes I was only about 11 at the time when I originally saw this). The movie is the first installation of Jigsaw's reign and his game of puzzles.  In this movie, a surgeon who is cheating on his wife and a man who was paid to follow him and take pictures of him are pitted against each other in a room chained to the wall. As more clues are found, more is found out about both of their twisted lives. One must kill the other to escape and save his family. In the end he loses his mind, saws his own foot off, murders the other man, and escapes only to leave the other man rotting alone in the dungeon. This movie was pretty good. I really enjoyed seeing the different types of puzzles that Jigsaw created to "save" each person. There were a few twists at the end that you don't expect at all such as the fact that Adam's key to his ankle brace went down the drain the second he woke up and drained it and the fact that Jigsaw himself was posing as a dead body on the floor the whole time. When he stood up, everyone's eyes just got so big the first time seeing the movie. I gave this movie a four for keeping me interested the whole time. This is one of those edge of your seat kind of series of movies which I really enjoy.

Movie - Vile (2011)

This is pretty up there in the craziest movies I've ever seen category. So there is this liquid that apparently comes out of your brain when you are in pain that this company is harvesting to sell as a drug. In order to get this drug, a group of people are kidnapped and put in a room together where their only way out is by filling the tubes by inflicting pain on each other. Another tube is inserted into their head and will kill them all if they either run out of time or try to remove the device. The group of people are pitted against each other to inflict enough pain to release them from the room, but once they are released they are killed by a turncoat who was in the group. Only one person survived and he set out to find the owner of the company and destroy her. I think it's just so crazy the things they had to do to fill the gauge. I gave this one a four. The movie was just so so crazy! If you watch the movie, check out what they do to that evil Asian girl.

Movie - Red State (2011)

Here is another one of those movies that kind of flew under the rador that I wasn't aware of. The movie starts out following some testosterone filled boys who are trying to meet girls on the internet to sleep with them. One night they go to meet a woman to sleep with, but once they get there they are drugged and held captive by an extremist religious organization. The boys fight for their lives to keep from being sacrified as the police get closer to finding the group's hideout. In an all out brutal gun fight, John Goodman brings it to the religious cult and stops them once and for all... by killing everyone (even the hostages!) The movie gets pretty crazy at some points and I like this movie okay. I gave it a three for having some good actors in it that I liked in other movies, but did not give it more because I don't really like watching religious cult movies where they torture and kill people for stupid reasons.

Movie - Bag of Bones (2011)

Here we have another one of Stephen King's novels turned into a mini series. This mini series was pretty much just one movie split into two equal parts of about an hour and a half. The movie follows a famous author who loses his wife in a terrible car accident. To get away, he decides to stay at his cabin. While at the cabin, he discovers that his grandfather took part in the rape/murder of a woman and child. The woman cursed his grandfather and all involved that they would drown their first born girls. As the curse started coming true, Pierce found himself caught in the middle of finding a way out of murdering a little girl who now calls him father. This movie took a really long time to get going and I think could have been done a little better. I was a little bored with it and only gave it a three though I'm a little interested in reading the book to see if it played out a little better.

Movie - Maniac (2012)

Here is a fun fact - I did not know that this was a re-make of an older movie until right this very second. So the movie is shot mostly in first person view where you are the eyes of the killer which is a neat take on filming in my opinion (we all know I love the first person view). The movie follows a very disturbed manikin store owner who had a traumatizing childhood watching his mother sleep around with strangers and do drugs (right in front of him which is gross). Growing up with mommy problems, he grew into someone who had all kinds of relationship problems. You follow the "maniac" (or crazy Frodo) as he murders women and removes their scalp and hair and takes it with him as a sort of trophy. He fits these trophies to his manikins and they become the women he has murdered so that he can keep them forever. When he meets the love of his life, she soon uncovers his secret and succombs to his murderous tendencies. This movie was SO rowdy and I really did not expect it to be as crazy as it was. I absolutely loved it. I especially loved that while one of the girls is dancing and trying to bait him to sleep with her that the music from Silence of the Lambs is playing in the background (the part where he's looking in the mirror). It was very interesting seeing Elijah in this sort of role as opposed to playing in Lord of the Rings. I gave this one a four and now am excited to look up the original!

Movie - The Caller (2011)

This was an interesting movie that I really liked. The movie follows a woman who is going through a rough divorce with a very abusive man. Once she has left him, she moves into an apartment building. In the apartment is an antique phone that links the present to the past. An old woman continues to call convinced that it is much earlier in the past than it actually is. Mary (the woman in the present) thinks this is a joke and convinces the old woman to kill her cheating boyfriend. When Mary wakes up the next day, she finds a strange wall built in her closet where Rose (the old woman) claims she has murdered and hidden the body of her boyfriend. Rose begins to punish Mary from the past by changing the present in many ways for not being her friend until Mary finally figures out how to stop her.  This movie gets so scary and gets me to thinking what I would have done in that situation. This is exactly why we have cell phones these days, so you don't get those weird calls from people who look up your number in the phone book. I gave this one a four.