Taglines: Are you worthy?
The film starts with a chase between police and a criminal named Edgar Munsen (Josiah Black). After crashing his car against police cruisers, Edgar runs to a rooftop and is surrounded by police as he holds a trigger in his hand. He asks for Detective Halloran (Callum Keith Rennie), who shows up as the other cops have their guns drawn on Edgar. He tells Halloran that he has to decide who will die, or else Edgar himself will die. Halloran takes out his gun just as Edgar pulls the trigger. The cops blow off Edgar’s hand and destroy the trigger, but someone has shot Edgar in the chest against Halloran’s orders. A weakened Edgar tells Halloran that the game has begun.
The scene then moves to a room where five people – Anna (Laura Vandervoort), Ryan (Paul Braunstein), Mitch (Mandela Van Peebles), Carly (Brittany Allen), and an unnamed fifth person – are chained to a wall with buckets on their heads. A recording plays from John Kramer/Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), explaining that in order to survive, blood must be given. The chains then start to pull the group toward the wall where buzz saws are sticking out. As they get closer, Anna cuts her arm and is freed. She tells the others to cut themselves to free themselves. Ryan and Mitch follow suit while Carly gets cut from behind. The fifth person is unconscious and realizes too late what to do, and he is seemingly killed.
A woman is jogging through the park when she stops next to a crowd of people gathered by the bridge. She turns around and screams when she sees a body hung from the bridge by the neck with a bucket over the victim’s head. The body is brought to the morgue where forensic pathologists Logan Nelson (Matt Passmore) and Eleanor Bonneville (Hannah Emily Anderson) inspect it, just as Halloran and his partner Hunt (Cle Bennett) arrive. Hunt offers condolences to Logan, whose wife passed away recently. The head on the body has been severed in half, presumably by the buzz saw. On the neck is a chunk of flesh cut off in the shape of a jigsaw puzzle. A small audio file is pulled out of the neck, with Kramer stating that now there are only four left.
The four victims are now in a barn with the chains still on their necks. They start getting pulled toward another potential death until Mitch grabs a tape next to the infamous Billy puppet. The chains stop, and another audio recording from Kramer plays. He mentions that someone among them has been injected with a poison, and there are three needles before them – one with the antidote, one with a saline solution, and another with hydrochloric acid. Kramer personally calls out one of them as being a purse snatcher.
It turns out to be Carly, who stole a purse from a woman that later died after she suffered an asthma attack and couldn’t reach the inhaler in her purse. Carly notices one of the needles has the number 3.53 on it, which is how much she stole from the woman and how much Kramer deems her own life is worth. The chains start to pull the four up toward the ceiling to hang them until Carly takes a needle. Ryan, who grabbed all three, yells at Carly to take one, but she never does. Ryan sticks all three needles in Carly’s neck, which releases them from the chains but also causes Carly to suffer a painful, bloody, burning death.
Detective Halloran later finds the body of a woman whose face has been melted off by acid outside a building. Logan and Eleanor inspect the body and see another jigsaw-shaped flesh chunk missing. The remaining three victims figure that they are there for something wrong that they have done and must confess. Ryan admits to doing a number of bad things like cheating on his wife (and his second). Mitch sold a motorcycle to a young man who later died in an accident. Anna only recalls being with her husband when their baby died, supposedly as a result of him falling asleep and rolling over on top of the baby, smothering him.
As they progress toward their next task, Ryan tries to walk out a door with a “no exit” sign, only to have his foot fall through the floorboard and get caught in razor-sharp wires that tighten around his leg. The next tape from Kramer instructs them on how they can get out of this. Anna and Mitch try to reach a lever to help Ryan, only for them to be trapped in a silo that starts to fill with grain. The grain stops pouring, and is followed by sharp falling objects (a rake, knives, needles, buzz saws). Ryan hesitates but reaches for the lever, saving Anna and Mitch but causing the wires to sever his leg.
Jigsaw is a 2017 American horror film directed by Michael and Peter Spierig, written by Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger, and starring Matt Passmore, Callum Keith Rennie, Clé Bennett, and Hannah Emily Anderson. It is the eighth installment in the Saw franchise, picking up over a decade after the death of the eponymous Jigsaw killer, during the police investigation of a new succession of murders that fit his modus operandi. Saw 3D (2010) was originally deemed the final installment of the series, before Lionsgate Films commissioned the production of Jigsaw from a pitch by Stolberg and Goldfinger.
Charlie Clouser, who provided the score for all previous entries in the Saw series, returned to score Jigsaw. Clouser re-imagined the music of the Saw franchise, following the six-year hiatus between Saw 3D and Jigsaw. Clouser stated, “this will be an opportunity [for me] to re-imagine how approach the score, and will be trying a more stark, bold, and stripped-down approach that will be more in line with the strong vision that the Spierig brothers are bringing to the table.”
Jigsaw has grossed $38.1 million in the United States and Canada, and $64.9 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $102.9 million, against a production budget of $10 million. In the United States and Canada, Jigsaw was released alongside Thank You for Your Service and Suburbicon, and is projected to gross around $20 million from 2,941 theaters in its opening weekend.
It made $1.6 million from Thursday night previews at 2,400 theaters, just below the $1.7 million Saw 3D made from midnight screenings seven years prior, and $7.2 million on its first day. It went on to open to $16.64 million, finishing first at the box office but marking the second lowest debut of the franchise. In its second weekend the film dropped 61% to $6.56 million, finishing third behind newcomers Thor: Ragnarok and A Bad Moms Christmas. In its third weekend, the film dropped another 47% and made $3.43 million, finishing fifth.
Continue Reading and View the Theatrical Trailer
Jigsaw (2017)
Directed by: Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig
Starring: Matt Passmore, Tobin Bell, Callum Keith Rennie, Hannah Emily Anderson, Laura Vandervoort, Paul Braunstein, Mandela Van Peebles, Brittany Allen, Michael Boisvert, Josiah Black
Screenplay by: Pete Goldfinger, Josh Stolberg
Production Design by: Anthony Cowley
Cinematography by: Ben Nott
Film Editing by: Kevin Greutert
Costume Design by: Steven Wright
Set Decoration by: Michael Vanderteems
Art Direction by: Greg Chown
Music by: Charlie Clouser
MPAA Rating: R for sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture, and for language.
Distributed by: Lionsgate Films
Release Date: October 27, 2017
