Jigsaw

This movie is polished and better written than most of the direct-to-video horror films that get released, but it falls short when the horror stuff is supposed to be happening. By that, I mean the gore; for a movie that has a monster with a sawblade for a hand marching about, I truly expected there to be limbs flying about! Maybe the filmmakers shouldn't have spent so much time on the other characters stories (or had less characters to begin with) and concentrated more on the action parts of the story...

I thought about not even flunking this film, because for a recent Full Moon quickie it's not all that bad. But you do have to wait like 50 minutes to finally see some Jigsaw action. Still, the film certainly wasn't boring to me (though I can imagine to many it will be, since it's not really a gore feast). The Jigsaw-killer being built out of the traumatizing fears of the students was a nice touch, by the way. Hmmm... but then again: "The Fear" (1995), anyone?. Okay acting & cinematography, even, for a low budget fair like this. Cool ending that was both disappointing and satisfying at the same time. You figure it out.

Full moon went down the drain on this one big time, the budget did not help for sure.

bad acting, stupid line and stupid people, terrible filmed, and so much more.

Surprise it got a 3 rating kind of deserve lower.

After putting together a mannequin for a college art class, a group of friends get together to get really drunk and burn the mannequin, as part of college tradition. For no apparent reason, the dummy comes to life and begins killing off its creators one by one. Just looking at the DVD cover in the movie store, I knew "Jigsaw" wasn't going to be a high-art cinema masterpiece. If that's what you're expecting from this film, you needn't read further. If you're looking for a cheese-ball horror film to enjoy with some friends, read on.

This film actually had some things going for it. It's much more enjoyable than I expected. The characters are better developed than usual. The acting is kind of hit-or-miss, the actor playing the art professor was quite good, some of the others were alright and some were just "blah". The gore could have been a little better in my opinion. The blood looked really fake and there's really not enough of it (the little there is was shot in the dark and shown in really quick flashes), and as you'd expect there's little to no suspense.

So why did I enjoy "Jigsaw"? The pacing was good, it was cheesy (a plus in my book), and the filmmakers obviously knew the script they were working with wasn't a masterpiece, so the film never takes itself too seriously.

The ending cheap, but it will leave a smile on you're face nonetheless.

5/10.

Jigsaw isn't a great movie (or even a good movie) but if you look back on the early 2000s fondly, it's still pretty entertaining. This is more of a straight forward horror film than 3 AM's other stuff (specifically Vengeance of the Dead) and while there's nothing groundbreaking here, they do some cool stuff with a very low budget and don't take any of it too seriously. If you do end up watching this, it's worth the effort to find a copy of the DVD. The making of featurette is a hoot and definitely makes the film itself much more enjoyable.