Kind of fun in a train crash way, but nothing of value beyond that. They set up an interesting meta commentary on Saw fans and possible Jigsaw defenders with the meeting only to drop it immediately. So much of the film is devoted to the weakest game in the series, with a bland protagonist, that Hoffman barely gets anything. Speaking of, I spoke fondly of the slasher influence some of these movies have, but you didn’t have to bring in the misogyny.

After a franchise that’s mostly been equal opportunity and detached identity wise, it’s like this film was written by the final victim of the carousel from the last one. The opening trap parades in it, with a cheating harlot in the most sexual outfit there’s ever been, boobs bulging boobily from her straps, and a woman was actually naked in one of these traps in 3. One trap is about how women just don’t shut the fuck up, with the protagonist screaming that at the victim after her death. The wife is literally called a trophy and killed off in a horrific way to hurt the protagonist. And Jill Tuck’s steely strength that complimented John’s is drained away to make her an utter damsel, reduced to screaming and begging and called a cunt while getting her face slammed into a table. It’s not pleasant viewing!

And that’s not getting into the weakest array of traps, the pink blood, the laughable 3D tells, the franchise worst performance of Gibson and that is a high bar to clear… and Gordon. Overestimating the importance and power of him without the emotional core of Adam, he’s just here to be the twist, and Elwes has never phoned it in harder. It cheapens what made the first film work- that bond between him and Adam- by suggesting he’d work with the man who ushered in his death. It’s hard to think of a level on which this film does work beyond marveling at the trainwreck. The franchise should’ve chronologically ended with 6, and the trap killing Hoffman, and in my heart that’s where it did.