My lack of knowledge is a strength: I’m one of the uninitiated viewers Darren Lynn Bousman, the film’s director, and Chris Rock, its lead and an executive producer, hope to — per press notes — lure into the franchise.
This latest macabre installment sprang from the mind of Rock, who told Michael Burns, the vice chairman of Lionsgate, how much he loved Saw and wanted to star in a new iteration.
A voice from a recorded message offers him an ultimatum familiar to fans: Bozwick can rip his tongue out and live or get hit by an incoming train and die.
I wish I could give a detailed account of how Bozwick dies or dissect the realistic nature of the tongue-torture device, but as a famously squeamish person I covered my eyes.
Oram, whom many will know as the cinematographer behind Drake’s music videos, deftly melds the grimness of horror with the energy of a dark, moody rap video.
Banks reluctantly heads to the tracks, where he realizes that the dead man is, in fact, his closest, and perhaps only, friend on the force.
Back at the precinct, a Jigsaw copycat delivers a message: “I am here to help reform the metro police,” he says.
The creepy message prompts Garza to escalate the case and put the entire team to work — much to the chagrin of Banks, who understandably doesn’t trust any of his colleagues.
On paper, at least, the two characters’ backstories — Marcus helmed the force during the height of its corruption — are ideal fodder for a textured rendering of a fraught familial bond; though it’s clear Zeke has more integrity than his dad, he’s also desperate for approval.
That’s a shame, because the story’s themes, from the unreformable nature of the police department to the cost of integrity in a space that values power above all else, could not be more relevant.
Jackson, Max Minghella, Marisol Nichols, Daniel Petronijevic, Richard Zeppieri, Patrick McManus, Edie Inksetter, Thomas Mitchell, Nazneen Contractor, K.