Saw V

Well, I didn't have to wait long to determine that both Saw IV AND Saw V are crap, because I just saw the latter last night and was bored throughout. I was going in hoping that Saw V would augment the story from the previous film to make for both a great movie in and of itself and to redeem its predecessor, but that just wasn't the case. Although this new installment is easier to understand than the fourth film, it somehow managed to be even less inspired, graphic, or clever.

In Saw V, detective Hoffman's relationship with Jigsaw is spelled out in extreme detail (unfortunately in a manner which is quite unbelievable...), but all this does is make the story more convoluted. Like I've said before, if you kill off the main villain in the third film, it's probably not a good idea to try to string the franchise through three more films, because the only way to do this in a cohesive manner is to reveal that a lot more was going on under the hood in the first three films than we possibly could have imagined.

The one redeeming thing about this borefest though was the main trap that is laid out for five people who unknowingly worked together to carry out a horrible crime. Although the trap itself isn't very gruesome (one girl even dies BEFORE she's put in the trap!), it seems to be perhaps the fairest trap of all those seen in the franchise to date, showing the genius (if you will) of Jigsaw and his purportedly redeeming life lessons.

Still, this couldn't save an otherwise horrible film. Although I can only hope at this point that Saw VI (the last film in the franchise) will somehow miraculously fix all of this, I'm extremely doubting it and even considering waiting until it comes out on DVD to see it...