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Saw 5 (2009) Review

Saw 5 (2009): Reviewed by Bryan Schuessler aka SHU

I am really getting sick of the SAW franchise. I still will watch them all, sorta like I watched all the Leprechaun films or all the Hellraiser films (after Hellraiser 3…I don’t know….). But Saw 5 really was just more of the same. I guess the new machines that kill people are fairly interesting and the series keep coming up with new puzzles and knowledge of the past to fill in the time, but there really was so much unanswered in the first Saw that it left tons of room for prequel information, history, and soap-operaish garbage. I stopped going to the theater to see the Saw films after the 2nd or 3rd. I don’t even remember. Its all a big blur of Saw films now. It sort of is like I ordered 5 meals from Denny’s and instead of them putting each meal into its own individual non-biodegradable container, they just tossed all the food in one large garbage bag.

Bon Appetit, bitch!

I mean, come on! How good can the films be when they are pumping them out each year! At least with Friday the 13th films, they are hilariously bad and Jason Voorhees really is an iconic character, just like Freddy Krueger and Michael Meyers, even Leatherface! But with Saw, Tobin Bell sorta died a bit ago, so its a crapshoot for who is replacing him. Apparently Bell has been training quite a few Jigsaws-to-be. That might have been a plot spoiler if one has not seen the first 4 films.

David Hackl directs the 5th installment and its not really a bad movie, its just more of the same. The others weren’t too bad either, except maybe the one with Donnie Wahlberg just because it had Donnie Wahlberg in it. I guess that one could say with the Saw films viewers just “saw” it all coming. It was not really anything fresh or too original It really has turned into the first soap opera for horror. Probably the goriest soap opera ever! Maybe the writers of the Saw films are writers for soaps on tv. Its a big conspiracy! Shhhh…Don’t tell anyone!

There are oodles of flashbacks in this film and so many plot twists that it gets just overwhelming and pointless. But, for films that have a fairly similar plot (Jigsaw gets a new batch of losers to play his games of death and see who perserveres…blah blah blah…) one has to throw quite a few curve balls in there to keep things moving. Saw films are like crack, nobody needs it but you just feel you have to have it….I think that analogy does not even make sense, but it was all I could come up with. If anyone has a better one, please email it to me so I can steal it.

The gore in Saw 5 is good. All of them had good gore. There was no gratuitous nudity, but there never was any. The franchise seems to not want to break that rule. Damn them! I think if anyone were to have a Saw marathon, I would want to saw my head off, but I would still probably show up at one. You can tell the film was directed by someone new, but I dare say that is the only thing new I noticed:a new style with the same old premise. Its not the worst way to blow 92 minutes.

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