- Directed by Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig
- Written by Josh Stolberg, Pete Goldfinger
- Stars Matt Passmore, Tobin Bell, Callum Keith Rennie, Hannah Amderson
- Run Time: 1Hour, 31 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPP6aIw1vgY
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
Ten years have passed since John’s death, but we start right out with a group of people in a trap. Bodies of those who failed are dumped outside, putting the police on the case as well as two medical examiners. It’s got all the Saw elements, and it’s decently made, making us wonder what’s going on. If you’re a fan of the previous films, especially the first few, you’ll probably enjoy this.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open with a high speed chase, as someone runs from the cops and causes a lot of mayhem along the way. He climbs up to the roof of a building, the cops pull their guns, and the man, Edgar, claims that five people are going to die if Detective Halloran doesn’t show up within minutes. Edgar says the game is just about to get started; he’s holding some kind of hand-held detonator, so the cops shoot it. As Edgar collapses, hand blown off and one in the chest, he groans, “The game– it’s started.” Credits roll.
Five people wake up with buckets bolted to their heads. A very familiar voice comes over the speaker and explains the rules. All the buckets have a chain that’s going to pull them into spinning saw blades. John says he wants an offering of blood to get out of this trap. One girl lightly cuts herself on a saw blade and gets out. She warns the others, who lose more or less blood. They get pulled into the next room, all but one guy, who dies. Anna, Mitch, Carly, and Ryan are in the trap room.
At the hospital, Detective Halloran and Hunt talk about Edgar. They can’t figure out what Edgar was up to, and he’s not able to tell them because of his wounds.
In the park, some people find the man who died in the saw-room hanging from a bridge. He’s still wearing his bucket-helmet. The corpse has a jigsaw piece carved into his neck. Halloran mentions that it’s like what John Kramer used to do, but he’s been dead for ten years. He’s got a tag, “and then there were four” on a memory card. The card has an audio of Jigsaw, saying there are going to be four more; it sounds like John Kramer.
In the trap room, Billy rides his tricycle with a sign, “Confess” around his neck. The chains start pulling them again, and they all start confessing. Mitch sold a guy a bad motorcycle, Anna lost her baby, but those aren’t much. Mitch plays the audio tape. We get a flashback to a purse snatcher, stealing a dying woman’s medication. Carly gets a one-in-three chance of injecting herself with acid.
Carly admits accidentally killing someone as a result of her stealing. She and Ryan argue about the injections until Ryan stabs her with all the syringes. That… turns out to be really messy.
Back at the morgue, Halloran reports that the voice ID says that it was John Kramer on the recording. The dead guy was a degenerate who got off the hook for murdering his own wife.
Mitch, Ryan, and Anna move into the next room. Ryan says he sold bad mortgages and good coke; Anna mentions that her husband rolled over and suffocated her baby, but that wasn’t her fault. Ryan tries to break down the door marked “No Exit,” and ends up stepping into a trap that seems poised to cut his leg off.
Carly’s body is found by the police, and Logan, the coroner, and his assistant, Eleanor, get to work on her, identifying the acid that killed her. Halloran starts to suspect that they might be the killers. Eleanor has been spending a lot of time on the dark web researching Jigsaw. They find a blood sample on the first victim, and it’s John Kramer’s blood.
Mitch and Anna get stuck in a grain silo and video screens come on. Billy explains that Ryan can save the other two if he’s brave enough to pull the lever before they’re buried alive. Ryan worries that he’ll lose his leg if he pulls the lever. It’s all very tense, but eventually, Ryan pulls the lever. Ryan does lose his leg, but the others get out of the silo.
Eleanor and Logan talk about them both being Halloran’s suspects in the case. Halloran’s not a great detective, and several suspects have gotten off on technicalities in the past. Eleanor admits that her alibi for the first victim is sketchy, so she drives him to her “studio,” where she’s collected a whole bunch of John’s old traps. She got John’s plans and built some of them herself. Detective Hunt has followed them and starts taking pictures.
Back at the hospital, someone kidnaps Edgar. Halloran looks into Logan’s military history, he was tortured during the war.
In the trap room, Mitch finds a tape with his name on it. John brings up the faulty brakes on the motorcycle Mitch sold; the guy who bought it was John’s nephew. Mitch is suspended above some huge shredding blades, powered by the same motorcycle engine. There’s not much left of Mitch when that’s over. Someone in a pig mask sedates Anna.
The cops have John Kramer exhumed. Inside the coffin– is Edgar. Halloran and Hunt raid Eleanor’s Jigsaw studio. They find Mitch’s body there, which seems almost too easy. Hunt goes to arrest Logan, who claims it must have been Halloran. Hunt is with Internal Affairs and is already investigating Halloran. Could Halloran be a copycat killer?
Eleanor comes to Logan; she says she knows where the current game is taking place.
Anna wakes up in chains next to Ryan. We see that they really are with the real John Kramer, not dead at all. He tells what Ryan’s guilty of. Anna used to be John’s neighbor, and he knows that she was the one who killed her baby. Her husband was accused, and he later killed himself.
Eleanor drives Logan to an abandoned pig slaughterhouse that used to be owned by John’s wife. Halloran has followed them. They go inside, and we see that it’s the right place. Halloran comes in, gun drawn, and there’s a fight. Someone injects Halloran with a knockout drug.
Hunt finds little jigsaw-shaped pieces of flesh in Halloran’s freezer.
John leaves Ryan and Anna a gun with one shell inside and leaves. One must shoot the other, or so it appears. Anna grabs the gun, points it at Ryan, and the gun shoots backwards, killing her. Unfortunately, the key to Ryan’s padlock was destroyed in the gun blast.
Logan wakes up in a trap, right across from Halloran, in the same kind of trap as him. John’s voice comes on and says they are the final two players. Their collars have laser cutters inside, all they have to do to escape is confess their sins.
Logan admits that he was the medical student who messed up John’s X-Rays many years ago, making his cancer harder to cure. The laser slices him anyway with blood gushing out his neck as he collapses. Halloran starts confessing all his police screw ups and wrong doings. The lasers turn off, but he’s not released.
Then Logan stands up; his lasers weren’t fatal at all and the blood was fake. Logan is the one behind all this after all. He recorded Halloran’s confession. Ten years ago, a game just like the one with Anna, Ryan, and the others took place in this barn. He was the first body, the guy we never really saw die. John gave him a second chance and took him on as a protege. So Logan decided to re-enact the very same games with Mitch, Ryan, Carly, and the others. Logan adds that Edgar killed his wife, but Halloran kept him out of prison because Edgar was his informant.
We get a flashback showing how Logan set all this up. Logan turns Halloran’s lasers back on and they split his head open like a Bloomin’ Onion. “I speak for the dead,” Logan says as he leaves.
Commentary
Taking place ten years after the previous film, there’s none of the same characters here. It’s got more traps and fewer callbacks, essentially a reboot.
It’s nothing unique or different, but if you like the others, this is good too!