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Breaking Down the Traps from ‘Jigsaw’!

Published

7 years ago

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Jigsaw is coming. The eighth film in Lionsgate’s long running Saw franchise is set for release on October 27th. I’m definitely a fan of the series, even though my interest started to wane halfway through the initial run. Nonetheless, checking out the newest sequel in a packed theater of gorehounds became a holiday tradition…for Halloween, of course. Thankfully, producers have had a healthy amount of time to concoct new ideas. They brought on an amazing duo of directors (the Spierig Brothers) to help Saw “take back Halloween.” After months of waiting, the current SDCC finally provided us with our first look at the all the mayhem we have in store for us. While new ground does not appear to be broken here, the more colorful look is refreshing. Ol’ Billy the Puppet has gotten a fresh coat of paint, and Jigsaw looks to be the kind of film that will have audiences laughing and screaming all at once.

With a new sequel, there are, of course, new traps. Combing through the insanity and quick cuts of this 2 minute 20 second clip, I’ve rounded up all the possible “games” our new round of victims…er, characters will have to play. With each trap, I’m going to make a prediction as to what the ultimate threat is from the game at hand.

Bucketheads and Buzzsaws

The first trap, right out of the gate is a fun one, signifying the beginning of a new game. We have five people who appear to be waking up in a room, with buckets on their heads (for some reason), chained to a wall lined with buzzsaws! What could go wrong? A lot, naturally. It’s a safe bet that much like Saw 2 and most of the later entries, this will be the main story we’ll follow throughout the film. Basically, a group of strangers unsure of how they’re connected must work together, or against one another, to make it through Jigsaw’s house of horrors.

In this particular scenario, the chains binding these poor folk to the wall begin retracting, pulling them closer and closer to the spinning blades.  I’m not sure how they could possibly get out of this one, or is it merely that one must be sacrificed to spare the rest?

New Lair? Trap Redux

The two traps above appear to be homages to previous films. The first resembles “The Magnum Eyehole” from Saw 2. The second image displays “The Angel Trap” (Saw 3) wherein the victim’s torso was flayed open. Perhaps I’m wrong, but this version seems smaller and more suitable for one’s head. Considering this scene is likely taking place within the new Jigsaw’s lair, we probably won’t see these bad boys in action. Imagine, though, those nail pressing into a victim’s face only to end with their head being split open, straight down the middle. Grand Guignol at its finest.

There’s also this blink and you’ll miss it throwback that takes us all the way back to the beginning – the trap that started it all!

Edward Needle Hands

At this point, our gang of survivors has been strung along from the wall of buzzsaws into an adjoining room resembling an empty farmhouse. Judging by the trailer, a majority of the film will take place in this area with one puzzle, booby trap, or test after the other. In this case, it seems one of our own has been gifted the power. All in all, I’d say this one is fairly straightforward. The only real questions, what’s in the syringes, and what effect will they have once injected? I’m hoping for some Cronenberg-ian body bleeding, and maybe some foaming at the mouth action.

Silo of Death

This is a terribly escalating situation. It has to suck being trapped in a silo as grain pours down on you. The risk of suffocating is incredibly high; the grain itself acts like quicksand. Each pebble slowly filling up your lungs, the pressure building up around you as the well continues to fill. Finally, you manage to make it to the top and find your footing. Then, without warning, sharp pointy objects begin raining down on you. That’s the situation two of our characters find themselves in. With proper staging, this could prove to be the suspenseful highlight of the film.

Stray thought: All of this farming imagery makes me wonder if the “big evil” of this entry is a Monsanto-like corporation.

Roped and Ridden

After someone falls through the floorboards, they’re quickly lassoed up by another Rube Goldberg style booby trap. We can speculate that the unfortunate soul is going to be dragged straight into the wheels of this revved up motorcycle. Will their face get shredded à la Ash vs Evil Dead? Or are we looking at more of a drawn and quartered…bisected situation?

Laser Neck Bomb

I honestly have no idea just what is going on here. Yes, it’s clear that the man is attached to the wall via a gadget resembling the shotgun collar from Saw 3. However, this being 2017, our new Jigsaw has updated his tech considerably. We’re dealing with friggin’ laser beams, yall! If he moves his head just a hair in either direction, we’ll be seeing that pretty mug fall to the floor in pieces. Could this be the cold open to the film? It surely has the feeling of being contained enough to work as such.

Saw-nado?

Red swirl designs have been an integral part of the Saw franchise’s style. They adorn the rosy cheeks of Billy the Puppet, and they’re constantly being found in videos and messages from the master tormentor. They’ve never actually been the trap. It’s a cool idea to bring such an iconic image to life in a presumably deadly way. In the middle of Farmville, standing all the way to the ceiling is a red swirl tornado thingy. Our victim is being hung upside down within the chamber and lowered to certain death. Just what lies at the bottom of this cyclone? My bets are on decapitation with this one.

Well, how close was I at pegging the various outcomes for all of these wicked devices? We’ll find out soon enough when Jigsaw hits theaters on October 27th!

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Editorials

Finding Faith and Violence in ‘The Book of Eli’ 14 Years Later

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2 days ago

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April 22, 2024

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Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.

To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.

Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.

After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.

SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?

Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.

For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.

Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.

Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?

AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?

Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.

From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.

The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.

Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.

With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…

There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.

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