Movie Review: Saw V

With everyone else dead and rotting, it's up to Detective Hoffman to continue Jigsaw's murderous traditions. When he feels that his identity might be discovered, the killer has to use all his training as a detective to track down anything, and anyone, that might expose him.

The Saw series has turned into a series that's really only for the fans. If you just walked into Saw V and sat down for your first Saw experience, I think you would be completely lost. There are a lot more flashback and clarifications of what took place several movies ago. I didn't find it confusing in the least, but I've seen the other 4 films in the last few months. I could see how a casual fan could get lost.

But the strength of the series is the traps, and I think this one delivers on that again. In addition to plenty more back stories, there are 5 people placed in a maze of traps and they have to solve each one to advance. The traps themselves are pretty inventive, and of course gruesome. You get a guy sliced and diced by a pendulum trap, a beheading, nail bombs, a shotgun rigged chair, a shocking bathtub, a room with closing walls and a trap that will make anyone flinch who has ever had a papercut between the webbing of their fingers.

The ads continually advertised "you won't believe how it ends" and I disagreed with that strategy, thinking it would only overhype and set expectations to high. I think I was right really as the ending is no more crazy and gory than a lot of other scenes in the series. So my tip is "you will believe how it ends, but it's pretty cool".

So again, there is blood, mayhem, twists and flashbacks. If you didn't like Saw IV, or any of the first 3 for that matter, don't bother. If you've never seen any of the films, don't bother. If you are squeamish, by all means don't bother.

Personally I found it to be another twisted bloody good time.

7/10