Open spoilers.
Thread inspired by the other thread on horror movies.
I’ve watched some of the Saw movies, but not all of them. I like the general concept of having a group of people stuck together and having to solve puzzles and overcome trials to escape their situation. The problem I have with the sequels, at least the ones that I’ve seen, is the way this is executed. From what I recall, after the death of the original Jigsaw, the villains of the sequels ended up being the person who survived one of the previous movies. IMHO that’s a cheap way of setting the whole thing up. Am I mis-remembering the sequels? If not, and this is the general setup for those movies, what do you all think about that particular plot device?
I’ve never watched any of them (not my cup of tea), but I have seen reviews and followed up on some of the twists and turns. It’s more complicated than that, with the original Jigsaw having apprentices and followers that appear in the films, either as victims or bystanders, before becoming antagonists. Also they played some clever games with flashbacks and previous events appearing on video to confuse the viewer as to the timeline.
This shit bugs me, especially when they do it as often as they do in this series. If the movies are labeled “Saw”, “Saw II” and “Saw III”, I expect the events to happen it a somewhat linear fashion unless there is a clear notice otherwise before the shit starts happening.
Whereas I really enjoyed that aspect and it caught me by surprise. The convoluted timelines were one of my favorite things about it. The series was actually extremely tightly woven and much cleverer than it should have been. Things dropped into the first film become plot points 2-3 films later.
I actually just rewatched the entire 8 film series in a row a couple months ago plus the new spin off with Chris Rock from this year (which was shit and doesn’t even feel like it’s from the same series.)