Jamie
Franchise Man will live foreeevvvveeerrrrrr! You can’t kill him because all you little piggies can’t get enough of your precious franchises. Oink oink oink. Eat up your Saw IV slop. I’ll gladly partake for I am lore incarnate! Saw is my bible of lore. No one has done it better than Jigsaw and his wacky traps. With that out of the way, I do have to acknowledge that we live in a wondrous time. We are years from entry after entry of dumb-as-rocks entries in franchises like Final Destination (fun) and Saw (less fun) that just fed its sequels into the BMT machine. Because who gives a shit, right? It’s just a bunch of rube goldberg death traps (in both cases). Just kill some people in fun and/or unpleasant ways and yada yada yada profit. And somehow we are now getting good entries in the series. Isn’t that cool?… and yet, is it also not part of a BMT disease. Did I say Franchise Man will live forever? Maybe not if every dumb movie is now good. Then he will die.
To recap, you must bear with me. It appears that this film was designed as some kind of nefarious trap for Franchise Man. I fear I might die in an attempt at an accurate recap. So really the film starts with Detective Rigg, a hot head devastated by the death of his partner at the hands of Jigsaw, getting kidnapped. It’s implied that there is another apprentice to Jigsaw that is the key to everything we’re seeing (since at the end of Saw III we saw Amanda get killed). Rigg is warned that he better listen and not be a hothead detective or else things will end badly. He proceeds to be a big ol’ hothead and things continually end badly for him. Meanwhile we see Detective Hoffman (someone who has warned Riggs about the aforementioned hotheadedness) and Detective Donnie Wahlberg (of Wahlburgers fame) kidnapped and set up to be electrocuted or crushed or some shit. Meanwhile to this meanwhile, the FBI are tracking stuff down and we get a bunch of backstory about Jigsaw and how he was a loving husband turned crazy by not only his cancer but the miscarriage of his child. Through this backstory they are able to slowly track Rigg through his trial and it’s implied that by doing this they will ultimately kill an innocent man. Rigg gets to the location where Wahlberg and Hoffman are being held and despite being told to not be a hothead he hotheadingly barges into the room, resulting in Wahlberg getting his head smashed by giant blocks of ice (Cooool! Rad!). Hoffman rises up and reveals that he is in fact the apprentice (what a twist!). Meanwhile, the FBI gets lost like a bunch of dumbos and kills Jeff (a character from Saw III) thus revealing that all this happened simultaneously to Saw III and it’s really cool and we love it. THE END (or is it? (Come on))
Saw IV. Come on. How is it that a franchise that should be built on the premise of “none of this matters” somehow makes everything matter in the most insane(ly dumb) way possible. I have to admit, there is a certain beautiful satisfaction in watching the movie spin itself into a knot around a Lost-esque flashsideways. But when everyone is so very dumb and everything is so very cheap and the traps just don’t even try to make sense then I have to say it: fundamentals. Focus on the fundamentals Saw IV. Either that or just keep getting dumber. I want rocks to look like geniuses next to these movies. Do it Saw. In actuality, the fact that Saw X got good reviews should be devastating. Just when you make me want it to be dumber, you make it less dumb? No fair. As for Vibrations. Uh, cha. This is what we call a Friend. It’s a wild time on VHS. Just to highlight one moment in a consistently insane film, at one point a friend of the main character (who helped him with his robot hand situation) lets him use his special speaker that is so powerful that he implies it could kill people or something. And me and Patrick looked at each other and were like “wouldn’t it be so funny if in the end he sets up the people who took his hands so they get killed by the speaker?” and then that more or less played out exactly like that. And yes… it was so funny.
Hot Take Clam Bake! Jigsaw: not a good person, husband, or potential father. I really don’t think enough time is spent making sure the audience understands that Jigsaw, despite the backstory we are being treated (and I mean, treated) to, does not in fact have justification for killing all those people. In fact almost no time has been spent making sure that is clear and all the time has been spent trying to convince us that he was just a broken man driven to desperate measures to make sure people appreciate life. And I say ‘No!’ This hot take has been paid for by the Committee to Make Sure People Understand Jigsaw is Not Good. Hot Take Temperature: Burning coals in your eyes unless you let mice eat your ears off in the next fifteen seconds.
Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me screaming as my fingers are torn off or whatever AAARGH AAAAAAH ARRRRRRRGH* Let’s go!
The Good? The further you get into Saw the more ridiculous it gets and, somehow, the less revolting it ends up being. The tricks are so obviously stupid and semi-unwinnable you just sit there waiting for whatever like … pig bile to melt someone’s face off or something. All in the service of a dumb twist where it turns out Mr. Saw’s childhood friend is actually a copycat Saw killer or something. Then we all clap and go home.
The Bad? These movies are garbage. I kind of mean that in the best possible way (I guess…). They have such flimsy premises and they are specifically so obviously constructed to service a single goal (seeing dem torture devices babyyyyy), that that is part of the charm. But as actual movies? Trash. Even as horror films? Double trash. Because they aren’t scary, and even compared to other torture porn films they are quite tame. I didn’t feel sick to my stomach once while watching this film! What are we even doing here? If I can eat a sandwich while watching your film then you didn’t do it right. Fact. The acting is terrible, the premise is terrible, the film is terrible. Slammed.
The BMT? I don’t think so. I think there is going to be one Saw film which is well and truly BMT. This is dumb, but it hinges too much on prior films to be a film you’d ever revisit and revel in. That’s just a fact, Jack.
I’ve decided to, for now, revisit the idea of sifting through letterboxd reviews for something interesting. I tried initially to have it find the “weirdest” review, but it just returned aggressively unfunny reviews. So I call this “Hey Letterboxd, convince me this film isn’t garbage.” Here is the example of a good review for this film:
This is it right here. This ties up the loose ends of the previous three films and feels like a fresh start for the franchise, complete with more melodrama, Hoffman, and more frenzied intricacies within the storytelling that is clearly being written with future films mapped out—this is where the Saw lore becomes the Charlie Kelly Pepe Silva meme. I liked the peppering in of Kramer’s backstory and the quick pacing and editing are standouts, hiding what needs to be hidden…
There we go. The Pepe Silva thing … sounds bad, but I guess it is like the lore becomes such a thick fog and I can eat it up with a spoon and I unironically love how insane it gets. You know, the scene transitions and editing are a big thing among the good-ish reviews somehow. Honestly, can’t say I noticed.
I think in the end the only thing we can give this film is the Saw staple Worst Twist (How?) for the ultimate reveal that the film takes place at the same time as the third film (I think) and that the main guy is the partner to Wahlberg. What a twist. It like … almost doesn’t make sense it is such a good twist. This film is Bad as I explained above.
As for our Friend this week Vibrations: uh yes please, may I have another serving of someone getting their hands chopped off in a ridiculous way and then getting robot hands and becoming an electronic music legend? This movie is actually somewhat famous on the internets for its crazy concept and oddly famous cast (well … it has Christina Applegate and one of the guys from Twin Peaks, those are famous people right?). And coincidentally this film also marks the first time a VHS popped up on RedLetterMedia’s Best of the Worst series where I was like “I own that VHS!” The film is surprisingly heartfelt and non-ridiculous for most of the first half which is amusing in its own way, but once he basically becomes a robot the film gets shockingly entertaining all the way up to the Chekov’s killer speakers in the end. Spoiler: he doesn’t kill them, he just blasts their ears a bunch and then gets them arrested. So that is good I guess. B, I would watch it again, but it is a little slow because the film is actually only notable for the robot hands which don’t come into play until the back half of the film.
Read all about … torture chambers maybe? In the Quiz. Cheerios,
The Sklogs
Bad Movie Twins 