It’s incredible to think that this is now the eighth film in the Saw franchise. What started out as a short film with a clever concept for a villain, soon catapulted director James Wan and screenwriter Leigh Whannel, along with star Tobin Bell into massive fame. The film’s unique concept and unexpected plot twists became a huge drawcard that led to the small budget movie making a 100 fold profit and making over $100 million off a $1.2 million budget. Talk about making a profit. Naturally, the studios wanted more of that same profit and so started making the inevitable sequels in the hope to replicate that same success.
James Wan decided to get less involved in those sequels though and stepped away from directing duties and each subsequent sequel ended up just trying to repeat the same formula with decreasing success. I stopped watching after the 3rd movie, as I felt I had had enough and not because I couldn’t stomach the gore, but because I just honestly couldn’t see them continuing with the concept any further. But like with all money making franchises, continue they did and now all of a sudden we have an eighth movie in the franchise. Seven years after Saw: The Final Chapter was supposed to end.
This time around though, Lionsgate is at least involving Wan and Whannel in the process form a writing perspective, who worked with Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg in coming up with the story for this return to the franchise. Michael and Peter Spierig (Daybreakers) are handling the directing duties though.
While I still think the Saw franchise deserved to die an honourable death many years ago, this trailer does at least make the film appear to be returning more to its thriller origins and not just being a mindless gore-fest. Hopefully, it will allow the character of Jigsaw to get a better send-off than he got with the previous Saw film.
Jigsaw stars Laura Vandervoort and Hanna Anderson as its two leads and although Tobin Bell has not officially been named as a star for this film, I think it’s safe to assume he has returned for this movie.
I would like to believe that this film could close out the franchise and give some sort of end to it, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to make money at the box office and the real horror will be needing to endure it yet again.
Last Updated: July 21, 2017
Left4Dead
July 21, 2017 at 11:47
Reminds me of the one episode of Two and a half men, taking place in the future when they are old. They were at the cinema, and in the background was a poster of one of the movies showing at that time. It was Saw 44 XD