Are Jigsaw’s Games Truly Over?

by Chris Vegvary

I remember my first encounter with Jigsaw. It was right after the first film came out on DVD and I had never purchased a movie without having seen it beforehand, but I had heard good things about Saw. I was interested in checking it out and didn’t have very much else going on at the time, so I bought it, brought it home, and watched it…and oh man, am I ever glad I did. It was a murder mystery the likes of which I hadn’t seen before, though I’ve heard the comparisons to movies like Seven and the like, but in my opinion, Saw started something completely different. Some people feel comfortable labeling movies in this genre “torture porn” and they call it trash, but to them, I say don’t watch it if you don’t like it, but don't put your messed up labels on the good movies.

Yes, Saw was followed by six sequels that came out each year right before Halloween. It blew up big in a way the studio didn’t expect and became Lionsgate’s biggest cash cow, hence the milking. Unfortunately for Jigsaw, the whole concept sort of lost steam right after the third film. After that, writing duties were taken over by a pair of writers who planned out the next four films in the series. In October of 2010, Jigsaw’s games finally came to a brutal, bloody, and kind of surprising ending in his first (and most likely last) 3D film. Or did they?

After the first Saw film came out, Carey Elwes had gripes about his payment, which is completely understandable. You go through all that and don’t get paid what you’re promised, you’ll likely sue. So with the bad blood between him and the studio (or the filmmakers, I can’t really remember), Elwes was not featured in any of the sequels until Saw 3D was released. If you’re like me, you liked the films, but the first was your favorite, and the reason you stayed so invested was because you knew Elwes’ character from the first film, Dr. Lawrence Gordon, would eventually have his fate explained. Luckily, it all came to fruition in the seventh (and last) film.

But what if Jigsaw’s legacy could still live on? It can, because now Lawrence and all the other survivors of Jigsaw’s twisted games have changed. As you saw from the most recent film, Dr. Gordon has been helping Jigsaw as far back as the beginning of the second film. Is he not the perfect candidate to carry on Jigsaw’s work? He knows the value of life now, having cut off his own foot in order to save himself, his wife, and his child, and he clearly does not have any qualms about showing to others what Jigsaw showed to him.

There’s been rumblings out there in Hollywood of another Saw film being made sometime in the future. I say, why not make it this year? It’s 2014. That means that by October, it will have been ten years since we first laid eyes on a Jigsaw trap. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I still want to play a game, and I’d definitely go see a follow-up to one of my favorite horror series ever to have existed.