Everything after its gory “pit-and-the-pendulum” opening scare sequence is downhill in the fifth and potentially last installment in a horror franchise that has run completely out of steam.
Inexplicably, Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) has come back to life since being killed off in “Saw III” to enforce his torture methods of bloody rehabilitation, this time involving five dicey characters implicated in a building fire that killed eight people.
Trapped in a poorly lit and filthy chamber of horrors, the group’s number diminish after detective Mark Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) is gets a promotion that squeezes out agent Strahm (Scott Patterson) in spite of his former heroic efforts that include escaping from one of Jigsaw’s impossible death contraptions.
There’s plenty of splattered blood for its own sake, but what little story there is makes no sense and the movie ends on a false note without bothering to tie up its dangling plot threads.
This movie blows.
(Lionsgate) Rated R. 93 mins.
