SPEAKER_05 0:04

Oh fuck, that's a lot of tongue meat.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Greetings and salutations, and welcome to Hack or Slash. If you're joining us again, welcome back! This shit's gonna go sideways fast. If this is your first time listening, welcome to the party. We are a horror movie review podcast dedicated to telling you whether a movie is a hack, a total joke, a waste of time, or a slash.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Totally killer, pun intended.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

We believe horror is for everyone, and as such, we're rating these movies with the perspective we've all gained from our varying walks of life and the flavors of fear we fancy most. My name is Chris, I'm your friendly neighborhood slash enthusiast. This week I'm joined by the freshly married Superfly Space Kai Mac.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Hola, muchachos.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

The gore lover Alexis. Hey everyone. The cowardly grouper Ryan. Haya, and the Scream Queen Paris.

SPEAKER_05 0:53

You can ride a lot of dick before dusk.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

This week we're going back to the theater as we explore a new entry to a storied franchise known for its gore, traps, and complex storylines. Before things get messy though, we have some follow-up.

SPEAKER_05 1:06

We recently reviewed the film The Orphanage from 2007. I, for one, am still reeling from that film, I don't know about you all, uh, but wanted to hear what our listeners thought about it. And overall, it has done pretty well in our polls. 67% gave it a slash, and only 33% had the audacity to hack it.

SPEAKER_03 1:22

Audacity.

SPEAKER_05 1:23

We have a couple comments from our friends. Stacy on Facebook said, I loved the review. I wholeheartedly agree with Chris and never would have watched this had I known what it was. When it came out, I was only a few months postpartum with my oldest child. This movie traumatized me. Having said all that, the fact that it still haunts me to this day, and that I remember so much about it really does speak to how beautiful and well done this movie truly is. I just never want to see it ever again.

SPEAKER_04 1:46

They really do need like a mom's warning on this movie.

SPEAKER_05 1:49

Yes, moms be warned. We also have a comment from Joseph who said, This movie right here, it definitely sent me on a roller coaster ride of emotions. Overall, love this movie. It was almost the right mixture of suspense and story that I like in this type of horror movie. I wish they would have found a different way to work in the you left at the right moment because all your friends are now dead because of a prank we played angle, instead of the conjuring type investigators. And that ending, when the mom realized, oh no, I definitely would watch again with someone that hasn't seen it just to see their reaction.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

A traumatic experience indeed.

SPEAKER_05 2:21

Yeah, this is definitely one of those movies you watch with somebody else to traumatize them as well. We also have a comment from one of our patrons, Julianne, who said, I didn't hear anyone mention the whistle that Beninha carried around her neck, and I wanted to note that the whistle is one of my favorite tools of terror used throughout the film. We hear it right before Laura is first attacked in the bathroom, and then it shows up in her dream the first night after losing Simone. Then again, of course, when Laura and Carlos witness Beninha's death, it would appear that it was the tool Beninha used to call Tomas, and to me it represents the sound of loss, as I imagine young Beninha running along the coast to the cave, much like Laura does, whistling for her lost child. Utterly heartbreaking. I actually got a tattoo of that exact whistle a few years ago as a reminder of this incredible film and the emotions it elicits.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

That's some pretty extreme fandom right there.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Yeah, I agree. So this was actually part of a much longer message from Julienne, and I just want to thank her so much for her vulnerability. She was one of the ones who recommended that we check out this movie at some point in the future just to make sure it was on our radar. And she showed that the first time she watched this movie was shortly after she lost her own mother to cancer. And it was a time of, you know, finding great comfort in solidarity and finding peace with like the depiction of a mother's love. So I just absolutely love that. And I think, you know, her perspective and her lived experiences and how she witnessed this film is such an incredible perspective to have that it was completely lost on all of us as we were watching it. And we really appreciate listeners that give us little nuggets from their life like that.

SPEAKER_05 3:46

Yeah, I love this comment too because whenever somebody brings a perspective and points out something that none of us mentioned, that's like really the essence of this podcast is like everyone's different backgrounds giving you different insights. So I really love this comment. Thank you so much, Julianne. We also just want to give a final shout out to one of our newest patrons, Jonathan. Jonathan, if you'd like to reach out to us, please do. We'd love to hear from you. Read one of your comments or even share one of your voice messages in an upcoming episode. And that is our follow-up.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

In 2019, news broke that Chris Rock would be dipping his toes into the horror genre, or rather, diving head first, by spearheading a concept for the ninth entry in a beloved Lionsgate franchise. A franchise that has grossed more than one billion dollars at the worldwide box office. This time, things would be a little bit different though. The franchise previously featured a diabolical mastermind and his successors held bent on teaching others how to cherish their lives. Rock presented an alternative idea. A copycat serial killer with an agenda of pursuing justice and a local police precinct's efforts to thwart them. Reactions to this film have been incredibly divided, with some raking it over the coals for its departure from the source material, and others praising it for the very same thing and its refreshing perspective. Tom will tell how it fares for us though, because this week we're talking about Spiral. What were you all expecting going into this?

SPEAKER_04 5:02

Well, I think naturally we all kind of have an idea of the Saw movies, right? So we're I mean, for me, I'm expecting gore, I'm expecting dirty, like gross film. I guess that's it. I guess that's that's all I really knew going into this.

SPEAKER_05 5:17

I personally was super excited uh that we were finally getting another Saw movie, especially going back into the theaters to see it. I was really hyped for that. But pretty early after it came out, I heard a lot of bad things and from people whose opinions I really like take into heart. Um, so I was kind of like, oh crap, is it gonna be shitty? Um so I kind of had uh apprehension going into it, but then I was also like, I've never hacked a Saw movie before. So I mean, like, even the worst ones, I still find something to enjoy personally, so I was like, maybe I'll still slash this. I don't know. But yeah, I was kind of like cautious going into this.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

I had such a different take. I think I've only hacked Saw movies before. Maybe only covered one or two of them on the pod. But you know, when the trailer dropped, it really set this up to be something different to the point where I didn't even realize it was Saw adjacent at all. I was like, oh, that seems kind of related to Saw like in the premise, but it looks so interesting. It looks really fresh, uh, looks different. And finding out that it was indeed like a saw, you know, film was was interesting because it looks so much grittier and and darker almost. I know saw films are pretty dark, but watching the trailer, I was like, this just looks, I don't know, like when you see a TV show become a movie and it's so well produced and the budget is big, that's what it felt like.

SPEAKER_07 6:38

Yeah, definitely. And we'll talk about visuals in the second half, but that was what really struck me was how different um this was. I mean, you guys know I love my saws. Um, and I was so excited to see this new fresher take. I was like, of course, there's probably gonna be lots of gore. I don't know what I was expecting from Chris Rock, whether it was gonna be a lot of comedy or what. So I don't know, I was really interested and super stoked to watch this movie.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

Yeah, I as well when I first saw that trailer, I had mixed reactions because I had cautious optimism while also knowing that, like Mac, I'm not generally a fan of the Saw franchise. I loved the first one because of that mind-blowing ending, but I also think that first one and how incredible it was sets such an impossibly high bar for any other movie to have a twist ending. So I didn't quite know what to expect. I was excited for Chris Rock, but then thought, I really hope I'm not sitting in this movie waiting for a punchline. So I really hope the comedy would be more subtle. And I try to keep an open mind because I was really hoping for a departure from Saw, and with those early takes and everything coming out and everyone saying, Oh, it's trash, it's not a Saw movie. I thought, so I might like it. You're telling me there's a chance. You know, while watching this movie, I don't know that I was generally surprised by any major twist and turn uh in the story, but I think what I what I felt more was just entertainment all the way through. Nothing impressive, but just hey yeah, I'm here, I'm in it, I'm not distracted, I'm not bored, I don't feel the urge to check my phone. So that was that was a little surprising for me.

SPEAKER_07 8:18

I felt like I was waiting around a lot in this movie, um, just FYI, just waiting for something to happen. Um, I guess I'm so used to there being a lot going on in Saw movies, like just a lot of a lot, a lot of craziness, you know. You guys know how it is, and I know you not everyone's a fan of that. I am. I'm like, where is this going? What is going on? I like this, but I felt like in this movie it was a slower pace for me. So while watching it, I felt like I was just like waiting for the next thing to come up on the screen.

SPEAKER_05 8:51

I totally felt that too, Alexis. There was a chunk of time where we had gone a while without a kill, and I literally wrote in my notes, I was like, okay, let me get another kill, please. What are we doing? Because you don't go to a Saw movie to like dive into the deep narrative, the storytelling, and all that. They were telling me a lot about characters. I was like, how much do I care about these characters? I just met them. They're probably all gonna die. Let me watch them die. That's what I paid for. Give me my money back. Um, no, but I definitely feel what you meant. Like there were some lulls um as far as like kills and like action and like big Saw moments goes. But overall, I think it was pretty entertaining, and it might just be the novelty of being back in the theater. But I was like, ooh, it's a movie and it's a huge screen, and I'm comfy and I have my snacks. So I felt pretty solid.

SPEAKER_04 9:33

To go from that, Paris. I felt like movies in a movie theater are the loudest thing I've ever heard in my life now. I was in there and I was like, wait a minute. And this was not like Dolby or anything. I can't even imagine what I would feel in a Dolby theater right now. It would be so overwhelming. But for me, I find it funny, Chris, that you said you were hoping to not just be waiting for a punchline because I was not necessarily waiting for a punchline, but just waiting for Chris Rock to stop trying to act serious because this movie the whole time, I'm just like, I can't I can't get out of my head of thinking, look at him trying to be serious right now. Like that's that was me this whole movie, and I was just like, I don't know, just I couldn't get into the energy that they wanted me to feel from this movie, I guess. Like this like intensity. I was just kind of staring at everything, but I don't know. I just found myself taken out of the feelings that they wanted me to have from this movie, and a lot of it is because we have people like Samuel L. Jackson and Chris Rock trying to make me feel like they're taking things real seriously. I mean, I guess that's what Samuel L. Jackson does, but I don't know. I was entertained. Entertained is a good overall feeling for this.

SPEAKER_07 10:40

Samuel L. Jackson is the most serious in every film.

SPEAKER_04 10:44

But like in a funny way. Yeah. You know? Agree. Like he's funny without having to try too hard. Mostly just using the F-word. That's but that's pretty much his screaming for sure. Waving guns, you know.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Gosh, I had such a different experience watching this film. I'm, you know, I'm sitting in this leather recliner in the theater, but I metaphorically felt like I was on the edge of my seat while watching it. I thought that there was tons of suspense throughout, and Chris Rock is so perfectly compelling as the Haggard detective. I felt the vibes they were putting out majorly. And perhaps I'm not as easily bored as everyone else, but this pacing was to me perfect compared to previous Saw movies.

SPEAKER_04 11:23

I agree with you. But we're not, I'm we're not them. Alexis and Paris are different.

SPEAKER_05 11:28

Interesting that you say that, Mac, because I felt like a lot of like the parts I didn't really care for in this were had like big straight guy energy. So it it tracks that you and a little bit Ryan would both kind of be in alignment with that.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Well, I mean, I also was in as entertained by it, and I thought the pacing was great.

SPEAKER_04 11:44

The three straight men of the podcast, obviously. Obviously. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

Yeah, no, I I I completely agree with you, Mac. I found that every bit of it was compelling, even if it wasn't necessarily surprising. I didn't have a hard time paying attention to it. And as for Chris Rock, I was so relieved that there was humor in it that was more subtle. Like he's just a bitter dude, right? He's jaded, but he's jaded for a reason and a perfectly fine one. Now, there were some some bits of his character that I found to be a little complicated. Uh, some of the actions didn't necessarily make sense with how jaded he is and also how hopeful he is at the same time. It seemed like sometimes it had a hard time like picking a direction to go, but I didn't mind his performance at all. I will say though that one of the disappointments I had with this movie, again, the original saw, has a really high bar, but I was disappointed by how apparent they made the ending like halfway through the movie. That was really, really disappointing to me. It didn't even feel like there was a lot of effort to mask it necessarily. I'm not someone who tries to figure out the ending to things. I'm like, oh, okay, well, this seems like very obvious now, very early on into my notes.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

I will say it's a very different type of twist than you get from Saw 1 because I feel like in Saw 1 it hit hits you out of nowhere and you're like, oh my gosh. In this one, it's more like you're watching the characters figure out the twist versus you know, you trying to wonder what's gonna happen in the end. It because, like you said, it is kind of apparent. To be honest, the thing that bugged me the most, I think that was kind of disappointing, and this is such a small thing to pick at, was the antagonist's like modified voice that they used during their messaging. I found that like so weird, and I'm glad it wasn't just like a fake jigsaw ripoff, like a copy. I'm glad it wasn't that, but it just seemed a bit odd to me.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Yeah, I was pretty meh about it.

SPEAKER_07 13:34

Yeah, it was the weirdest thing that I could totally imagine.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

I will say though that that voice, for as weird as it was, it did provide just enough to be semi-gender neutral. So I think it did a good job of masking like could it be a male or female antagonist? Whereas I think it's pretty obvious in the original Saw movies that like some dude is doing it. But also I'm like trying to be okay with it, and I think a lot of the reasons why I'm okay with so much of how different this movie is from other Saw movies in terms of its spacing, is because the original title is from the book of Saw. So you already know it's gonna be Saw adjacent, but it's not gonna be exactly the same. So I I was okay with it kind of stepping away from that.

SPEAKER_07 14:18

Yeah, it really surprised me. Um, I don't know if anyone's seen Hostile, but so Hostile, the first one, yeah. So the first one you kind of get it from the um participants' point of view, and then um, or the protagonist, and the second one you see it from the antagonist point of view. And I feel like that's kind of what surprised me about this because in Saw movies you usually see you don't see the setup of any traps, you just see the trap and what's going on and how this um victim or protagonist or and sometimes an antagonist go through these um traps. You don't necessarily see the detectives working, although there is that um sort of element. So I do like and was surprised at how much that they flip that around, and it was a lot of like the crime who done it um about, but which I I like. I mean, I like the gore fest too in the uh Saws, but you know, I do like a lot of crime, so a lot of crime documentaries on my Netflix suggestions.

SPEAKER_05 15:18

Like you, Chris, I was disappointed by the let's call it a twist. Um, but I and I can't wait till after the spoiler break when we can all say, Hey, when did you know that this obvious thing was gonna happen? Um, because it's one of the first things I have in my notes, and every time there was more information, I was like, this just fulfills that theory, and then it was revealed, and I was like, Okay, cool, what now? Um, so that was a real disappointment for me. Like the predictability of it, it was a bit much. Um I was also kind of disappointed by like all of the cop stuff. Like it was it felt like they were checking off every single cop trope and like cliche thing a cop would say, and like just putting it in the movie. And I was like, okay, I get it. Can like let's do something else. Um, these characters have a lot of potential range, but you're kind of pigeonholing them into this like I'm a crooked cop, and like I'm a cop that doesn't need a partner, I don't play by the rules. I was like, spare me with that. But I was also very pleasantly surprised. Every single one of the kills I think was original, and to be able to still consistently churn out original kills was something I was really happy about.

SPEAKER_04 16:18

Yeah, uh the kills are good in here. I think I'm gonna kind of go along with some of the things you've already said, which is that the storyline or the dialogue in this movie is the one of the biggest disappointments for me. I sometimes sit back while I'm watching a movie and like instead of thinking about what like the words might make me feel, I think about what the words are that someone's saying, and like there's a specific dialogue that stands out in my head between Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson, and they're just saying words to each other, but they are not having a conversation about anything. I don't know. And I understand it's a movie, they can't have the full conversation, but like the dialogue here is just like, I'm a cop, I'm divorced, you don't need a family, you're not gonna have a family. Women suck. We hate each other, you're gonna die. Like it's just like okay, cool. And you know, there's other things that contribute to it, like of course, Chris Rock drives an old classic car, and like, yeah, we get it. It's a cop movie, we understand, but that was my biggest disappointment.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Yeah, so there's for sure a moment that I'm thinking of between Chris Rock and Samuel O'Jackson. It's like I think their first scene actually together, and there's such an apparent jarring cut in that scene where like Samuel O'Jackson's going off and then he's like casually saying goodbye immediately after. I'm like, what is this nonsense? Where's the rest of that conversation? Because this is not how it went.

SPEAKER_04 17:38

Yeah, it it actually didn't make sense. They just wound up at a conclusion, and you're just like, What? Where how do we get here?

SPEAKER_05 17:47

I guess so.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

I don't really mind the rest of the the cop angle though. You know, a lot of the tropes that are used are are used to to paint a really a caricature of bad cops, and it's something that's like you you see in real life, it's something that you see in media, and I didn't mind it because I think the original Saul films for me felt like oh, this is a cop movie that's not trying to be a cop movie, it's trying to be something else. Whereas this is like, okay, what if we actually embrace that and try to talk about something important as it pertains to that? And uh I I personally didn't mind that at all. I found that the more it focused on the cop stuff, it became more of a cop drama than a horror movie, but it just means I wasn't afraid of it. It was entertaining, but I didn't find a lick of this movie scary or even subtly jarring.

SPEAKER_04 18:38

I agree, except the first scene, particularly probably because it was my first time back in a theater, and I'm sitting there by myself in a mostly empty theater, and the first scene happens, and I was like, Oh god, I forgot what this is like and I'm not prepared for it. So it got to me a little bit, but I'm I'm not scared of it.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

I need to clarify the first loud sound that you like see and hear, or is it the first like jump scare situation?

SPEAKER_04 19:06

No, no, no, the first whole bit. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

Like the first kill scene?

SPEAKER_04 19:11

The first kill scene got to me where I was like, Oh yeah, I forgot this is a Saul movie.

SPEAKER_03 19:16

I forgot we're doing this on a big screen. I can't go anywhere. I have no one to hold on to. Yeah, basically. Just me and my popcorn.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

I think this movie kind of straddled the line between thriller and horror and leaned more towards thriller, which I did not have a problem with. I love thrillers, and I watched some crime documentaries, probably not as many as Alexis. I was just watching uh part of the uh was it Sons of Sam documentary before I come into uh recording? And I know Alexis has a lot to say about that, but um I I didn't I didn't mind it. It wasn't scary though. It's not one of the things you're gonna go to and and check out the shadows as you're walking away from the theater. You're gonna watch it and you're gonna think, oh man, that was entertaining, but you're not gonna have that two o'clock in the morning wake up and check in the check in the bathroom, check downstairs kind of situation. At least I wouldn't.

SPEAKER_04 20:07

You're not a dirty cop.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

Exactly. Well, that's I guess if I were a dirty cop, things would be a little bit different.

SPEAKER_04 20:12

Probably not, but maybe.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

Look, he's not a cover cop who doesn't follow the rules. That's what this movie was.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

At least he wasn't six days away from retirement.

SPEAKER_07 20:19

I mean, I checked my coat closet uh when I came home. I don't know. Something about Saul always just, and I think that's why it's one of my favorite franchises, is that it just always like is kind of it could happen. I mean, honestly, I've been so good to people in my life that it probably never would ever happen to me. But it's still that possibility that someone's crazy out there and could make a trap like that and do something like that. But um, yeah, I thought it was kind of scary in my opinion. And also the jump scares got me every time. But I think because I was excited to be back in a movie theater, it's a different feeling, jump scares at home versus jump scares in a movie theater. And I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

It's like when a kid is out uh, you know, with his mom and says, Hey mom, can we stop and get some jump scares? And like, no, we got jump scares at home.

SPEAKER_07 21:04

Pretty sure I said that the other day. I was like, we got ice cream at home, like it's just never the same at home. It isn't, it sucks at home, always. Okay, well, let's unpack that later.

SPEAKER_05 21:13

I totally agree, Alexis. I felt um still very scared. I was happy to see that like even though they redesigned like the pig face bitch, it was still very much a source of fear for me, especially because of the jump scares. But kind of like Mac and Ryan were saying, this specific saw killer has a very narrow MO that is absolutely not something that I would fall into. Like I am not a cop. I don't have to worry about the pig face bitch being in my closet, at least not this time. Um, so that was kind of a little bit of a bummer because it allowed me to leave the theater with virtually no fear at all. Like I didn't even look in my backseat.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

But did it also pull a semi Tuckerendale versus Evil where you kind of root for him a little bit? I'm not saying I did, but I'm just wondering.

SPEAKER_05 21:57

Yeah, we'll have that conversation too, because that's a really good one.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

For as not scary as this movie was, I did find the ending to be particularly traumatic. And it ended in a spot with a sort of energy that I don't know that I was really expecting. It didn't match any kind of crazy twist or anything like that, but the ending that the original saw had, right, just leaves you with this feeling of like, oh, we're leaving and nothing's really being resolved, right? Like we're leaving in the midst of just these shocking revelations and knowing that things are things will get much worse. And I think this one left me with that as well. It wasn't like a shocking revelation by any means, but just the final thing that we see is so traumatic and so hard to watch. And then also knowing this, like, well, this could clearly carry on for many more movies. Not that I'd want to see it for many more movies, but I'll be straightforward here.

SPEAKER_04 22:53

I hated the ending. This ending left like the most sour taste in my mouth. And not sour candy, it's kind of you know, kind of rough but kind of delicious. Like sour leftovers in your fridge, and you didn't realize it's been two weeks and you you went for it. Oh it left a very bad taste in my mouth.

SPEAKER_05 23:13

Honestly, I mean, after like the big quote unquote plot twist was revealed, and I was like, okay, cool, we knew that. The big finale, let's say, I felt like had some really strong elements, but there were a few specific choices that really just made it camp for me. Like I couldn't take it too seriously. I was like, this is a complete gag, maybe the funniest part of the movie, and I didn't really laugh overall. And then like it was also kind of trying to be so serious and like so somber at the same time, and I was like, Y you didn't you didn't nail it for me.

SPEAKER_04 23:49

Very on the nose in some ways.

SPEAKER_05 23:51

Yes, very on the nose in some ways, but then like other choices really just like shot itself in the foot. Let's say that.

SPEAKER_07 23:58

Chris, I never thought about it um that way because at first I didn't really I wasn't a fan of the ending, but now that you had said, you know, it kind of gives you vibes from the original, I can I can totally see that. Um I don't think it's as strong in my opinion, but um you kind of made me take back a little bit of what I thought about the ending. I mean, I was confused because I think when you have the original saw, and when you have the original jigsaw, it's very cut and dry. So, you know, in the other fran in throughout the franchise, they bring different killers and different jigsaws that you know that that's not the original one. So that's how I felt in this. I felt like this wasn't a a way to end a movie that I normally would expect from this.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

I do want to be perfectly clear. I definitely don't think this ending is as good by any stretch of the imagination as the original. I just mean like the general feelings, like subtract the oh fuck, what just happened? Subtract that, and then keep the rest of like the ooh, this like leaves a a bit of a pit in my stomach, knowing what could unfold next. But yeah, this definitely is not as as strong as the original's ending.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

It is something you kind of see coming. I'm not the very like final scene, but the the whole last section of the movie, it's building towards it, you know it's going to happen in some way, but that final scene, I feel like it matches the level of gruesomeness that you would get in other soft films. So like that part I think they they hit the mark on. But it's done in in a in a way that's I thought it was a solid finish to a really grueling run up to that point, but it's perhaps not the ending that we wanted. I didn't really have any problems with the actual like final ending. I I mean it's hard to watch, I'll say that. But um, I I didn't feel like it was like a like a lackluster approach. I feel like they they hit it just in a different way.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

Well, we are definitely a house divided tonight, so let's see how this shakes out. But before we get into the ratings here, Alexis, how many people died?

SPEAKER_07 25:58

We have a total of seven deaths in this movie. A little underwhelming for a Saw movie, to be quite honest.

SPEAKER_01 26:04

But what about the Animal Report?

SPEAKER_04 26:06

A lot of pigs died, but uh you know, nothing on screen, nothing to worry about for the Animal Report.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Let's go ahead and get into the ratings then spiral from the Book of Saw. The new release in theaters currently, in theaters only, you're not gonna find it streaming just yet. Is it a hacker or slash?

SPEAKER_00 26:22

I'll go first. This, hands down, is the best Saw movie ever made and 100% a slash. It's a thrilling, suspenseful watch. It's got a stellar cast with a fantastic lead, and I think the best saw film visuals, gore or otherwise, it just feels like a more adult approach to saw.

SPEAKER_07 26:41

It's funny. I knew I was gonna come here tonight, and the people who typically don't like saw movies were going to like this movie, and the people that typically do like saw movies were going to trash this movie. Um, I'm gonna be honest with you, wish there was like to me, Saw is a gore fest. It is it is torture porn, kind of the kind I like, I guess. I mean, in all actuality, I do like the crime elements of it, but it just this just wasn't my saw. You know, you have this Chris Rock pivoting this comedy a little bit, which I thought was a little too much when you're bringing up Twilight in the movie, although I was thinking about Chris. And you took that personally. I took it personally. I was like, who's calling me out on Twilight in a saw movie?

SPEAKER_04 27:25

From a podcast that brings up Twilight often.

SPEAKER_07 27:28

I was like, they did this to me, straight to me. And he flips between, you know, the the gore and the comedy, and then you know, intertwines this like political commentary that I didn't think meshed well throughout the entire movie, or I think it wasn't as intentional as it should have been. But honestly, Chris, you made my hack turn into a slash though, surprisingly, because what yes. Um, I was gonna give this movie a hack because this is not my Saw movie, but I do like this movie. I do like it, and you said it's coming from the book of Saw. So when I took a step back, I was like, you know what? I didn't hate this movie. I love crime documentaries, I love the I love crime dramas too. So I I enjoy that aspect. I was just had a different expectation, so maybe my expectation was a little bit too high. So when it came out of the movie theater, I was not sure I felt was gonna give it a hack tonight, but not giving it a slash. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 28:28

Wow, that is actually pure purely shocking. I I did not come in here with any expectation of swaying anyone. I don't even feel that strongly about this, though. Well, you do. I mean, I ha I like it either way. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

It was Gladiator. Are you not entertained? Alexis thought about it and thought, yeah, I was entertained.

SPEAKER_07 28:46

I didn't want my money back. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:48

Well, that's good.

SPEAKER_07 28:49

I would not consider this a Saw movie.

SPEAKER_00 28:51

Well, that's good because it's not really a Saw movie.

SPEAKER_07 28:54

Yeah, it's a spiral movie.

SPEAKER_00 28:55

Because had they added Tobin Bell into it, uh, I think the director has even stated it would have just been Saw 10.

SPEAKER_07 29:01

Which I'm also down for.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

I know you are, but we didn't need that. It's 2021, it's the future.

SPEAKER_05 29:06

I was optimistic vaguely when I went to see this. Um and then Chris was like, everyone says the movie's shit. So I was like, okay, I'm less optimistic. Um, which maybe worked out in this movie's favor. I really am not too sure. Um there's a lot about this movie that truly just we can say it sucks ass. Uh, the story, the dialogue, um maybe the most obvious worst character reveal of all time. I'm somebody that like loves to like guess the ending, and this one wasn't even fun. It was like handed to me, and I was like, come on, at least like make me fight for it or work for it or something. Um, but that was a huge disappointment for me. And then just like in the end, they tried to make a point and take a stance about something that's like very serious and like very real. Um, but they did it in such a way that I feel like they didn't add anything to the dialogue, and they just kind of like they didn't show anybody on either side of the conversation like something they didn't already know about the other side, and it feels like it just muddied up the dialogue in a way that I don't think was helpful or even necessary. I like the intention that they tried to that they went with um trying to say something, but I don't think they ended up saying very much at all. Uh but this is a Saw movie, so I didn't come here for any of those things. I came here to watch people die in crazy ways, and I got that. Um, some of the craziest ways I've ever seen. Uh, especially that first one. There's parts about anatomy that I still don't quite understand, but I'm very scared. Uh so this is gonna get a soft slash from me.

SPEAKER_04 30:36

Wow. Wow. Wow, not what I wrote in my notes. Taking a turn. This is a very hard one for me, and I think I can tell that I'm not the only person in the room that feels this way where I left this movie so unsure about what I would say. And I think I only and once again, I watched this twice. I mostly I didn't see the ending twice, but thank God. I think I decided maybe like an hour ago what I would rate this movie, and it comes down to three things for me, and they are all negative. Well, I did not enjoy the acting and characters in this movie. I've never felt less like a killer is a killer ever in my life while they reveal their manifesto. The the the I'm it is me. This is why I'm doing this was like literally somebody ordering a burger at McDonald's. Like it was like nothing, like there was no energy. They felt nothing. I felt nothing, they felt nothing, I already knew it was them. It was very meh. The Tired Cop storyline is this is literally every dirty cop movie you've ever seen in your whole life with like three sawkills in it, you know, like three tortured kills. And and the two things hardly interact with each other aside from people showing up to the kills. That it's it's just that for me. And again, the really, really heavy political ending that had no point except for to make me feel horrible about something that actually exists in the world and sucks. It it was a a miserable feeling for me at the end. Like to the point where I'm just like that, you know, we we very often say the ending kind of determines things, and for me, it it really determined a lot here. So I'm gonna hack this movie. It's not a hard hack, it's not bad. You could go see it. You wouldn't be wasting your money.

SPEAKER_03 32:24

I didn't want my money back, considering I saw it twice.

SPEAKER_04 32:28

But it's a hack for me just just because there's so many things where I'm just like, eh, it's not original, didn't do things that I want. I don't know. Soft hack.

SPEAKER_05 32:37

Ryan, I literally agree with everything you just said.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

I feel it.

SPEAKER_05 32:40

Where was the lie?

SPEAKER_01 32:41

Yeah, that's like the classic 49.9% split.

SPEAKER_05 32:45

Exactly. That's where we are. We're holding hands across this divide.

unknown 32:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:50

Yeah, you were here to mend the fences. So I I definitely don't disagree with a lot of what you've shared about the ending. But when considering how I felt about this movie, I I walked out of it knowing that I didn't hate it, but I was also conflicted of like, huh, what has this done for me? The reality is I'm not really a fan of song movies. I think it's quite ridiculous to root for jigsaw and this whole like cherish your life thing. It's like, okay, so some sick dude is just like the judge now and gets to just ruin people's lives uh and be the determining factor of where they went wrong. People are shitty, humans are shitty, it happens, and I just never really bought into that. It was really cool in the first film, but never something that I could get into past that. Granted, I also haven't seen the rest of the films, but looking at this film, even if it's imperfect, even if it didn't stick the landing in all the ways that I wanted to, it aesthetically was much nicer to look at. I loved the fact that they used more primary colors and not just like everything's real yellow or everything's real green in Saw. And I love that they took the idea of vigilante justice and made it have a point. It's someone who has a a cause that, yeah, you're not afraid of them because you don't feel like a killer's a killer because you're you're kind of on their side a little bit. So when I look at this movie, I I was entertained throughout it. It wasn't a Saw experience. And Alexis, I think you summed it up perfectly when you said, I think if you like Saw movies, you're not gonna like this. But if you don't like Saw movies, and this is the one for you. There have been how many Saw movies now? We've had all of that. We've had more of the same, and I think it's okay for this one that doesn't even have Saw really in the title to deviate from that. And I enjoyed it, so it's getting a slash.

SPEAKER_05 34:41

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 34:42

Here I am again. Wow lonely.

SPEAKER_04 34:44

Lonely on this island.

SPEAKER_01 34:46

Well, let's see if you continue to be lonely because we also have a bonus score from one of our listeners. Please be on my side.

SPEAKER_02 34:52

Hi, Jordan Youngblood here. Let me start off by saying that anyone who liked Spiral should get their COVID test done as soon as possible, because one of the biggest symptoms is a lack of taste. I give Spiral the biggest hack I've ever given any movie, and that's saying something as I am a diehard Saw fan. This wasn't a Saw movie. This was a bad cop drama with lackluster traps, stupid storyline, and zero meaning, with the name The Book of Saw haphazardly slapped onto it for Saw fan bait. I do not think it would have gotten greenlit if it wasn't for the name Saw backing it up. It was poorly written, and not to mention this movie was predictable as hell, and I never figure out the endings to movies. I wasn't expecting much from this movie, but damn was it terrible.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

Strong words from Jordan, who was a guest of ours on our episode for Saul 3.

SPEAKER_05 35:43

They did not lie.

SPEAKER_07 35:44

Exactly. Completely agree with all of those points, to be honest, and still gave it a slash.

SPEAKER_04 35:50

This movie truly is a 49.9%er, you know. I mean, that was a very strong, not 49%. Yeah, that was straight up zero. But I we all agree.

SPEAKER_00 36:02

Um I don't know if we all agree.

SPEAKER_04 36:04

You don't count, I don't know where you're coming from with this.

SPEAKER_00 36:07

Yeah, this was as I said, the best Saw movie ever made.

SPEAKER_07 36:10

So Saw movie, not best movie ever made.

SPEAKER_04 36:13

Well, of course not, but for someone who is usually very particular about what people say and what like storylines are going on, I'm very confused by Mac's feelings about this movie, where like in this movie they weren't saying anything, and you're like, this storyline was great.

SPEAKER_01 36:26

I think it makes perfect sense because I think Mac is seeing what I'm seeing where you're not zoomed into the like absolute minute details of how this movie was executed, but rather impressed by the overall attempt of the direction it went. Because I think the bigger message in this movie is important.

SPEAKER_04 36:42

It's 2021. I'm no longer impressed by attempts.

SPEAKER_00 36:48

I think if you get hung up on like the messaging and the depth that you wanted it to have, you have to remember when it was slated to come out, and they weren't aware of how aware the rest of us were going to be a whole year later. And I know that seems like a crazy thing to say because this is you know centuries of this going on, but um I I I don't think that they expected it to hit at the right time. You know what I mean? Like they didn't expect it to hit in 2021.

SPEAKER_04 37:18

I got a hard disagree on that.

SPEAKER_05 37:20

I feel like the craziest thing you just said is that Ryan went into a saw movie expecting depth.

SPEAKER_00 37:24

I think we've molded Ryan into someone who looks for depth in all things now.

SPEAKER_01 37:28

I just pay attention to words. Well, Ryan, there you go. Jordan has your back. And uh, although that's not an official score as it as it stands on Hackerslash, at least you know you have friends out there, because a lot of people did tear into this movie. I will I'm gonna be I'm gonna be real. I saw one tweet from Jordan saying, I hope no one bases what Saw is on the on this like trash I just saw. And I was like, ooh, is this really the movie that I want to risk going into a theater for? Because it wasn't, right? Like I was walking into this thinking, man, this is gonna be a bad time. But for now, Spiral 2021 from the Book of Saw has earned four slashes, some of them stronger than others, and one hack. Now, you can see this movie in theaters, it's the in-theaters exclusively. There's no plan to put it on streaming in 45 days or anything like that. So up to you if you want to check it out. But regardless, join us in the second half so we can break down all the spoilers and all the hot takes. See you in a bit.

SPEAKER_00 38:37

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SPEAKER_01 39:28

Now we have a lot to get to here, but before we get into the specifics of why we disliked 49.9% or loved this movie, Alexis, what's the gore score?

SPEAKER_07 39:38

The gore score on this, I have to admit, was very similar to my um rating for this movie. I started off low because in my opinion, I was comparing this to a Saw movie, which is very high. So I was like, um, in comparison to Saws, um, this is on the low Saw ranking. But realized I needed to take this movie for what it was worth and um separate it out and I gave it a medium. I don't know, it's the least scory out of all the Saws, but you know, five out of seven deaths that are in this movie are from traps. So I'm like, okay, there's only five death uh from the traps, so I'm like, uh, but it's not really still that high compared to other Saw movies. I feel like there's always just filled with traps, and I think it's just because there's always this bombardment of death in Saw movies that you don't get that with this, and that's why in the pacing, and I know Paris felt the same way, it was just like waiting for a death, waiting for a death. And I think you have that expectation in Saw movies, and you know, it didn't quite come across in this movie. But when you realize it's just from the book of Saw, you're okay with it.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

Yeah, it makes perfect sense to rate it, I think, as a medium as you did, because this is so low for you and so high for me. And if this is the least gory, that explains why I don't like Saw. Because I felt like this was the perfect amount.

SPEAKER_04 40:54

I feel like the other thing is we in a traditional Saw movie, you have usually a group or like a there's like a centralized location. This one's like very spread out and even spread out throughout the movie as well, so you don't get that like concentration, and sometimes we get the story during the kill, so you don't really care about the story because you're like watching someone die. That sounds horrific. But that is usually how it happens in a Saw movie, and you definitely have a different perspective here where like it's so much more space for the story, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 41:24

And then this one, like you said, you can see it from the other side, so there isn't much like going on where you're like, oh wait, who is this move? Who is this person? You've already seen these characters that are being killed. I thought it was really interesting that each of the deaths meant something. I know like that's a unique thing in Saw, but you know, it's like something clever, like Boz, you know, lying on the stand, tongue gets cut off. And the next kill you have with the other detective, there's the Chinese finger trap. So, you know, they always say like he was just shooting before he asked questions. The captain, you know, she was covering a lot in the department. So I really um essentially to go about going to my favorite death, I really liked hers because it was, you know, the cover-up of it all, you know, and interesting. I don't know how I'd feel about that. Um, because most saw traps, I'm I'm like, hmm, which one would I actually do? Like, I've very much put myself in the character's shoes. And I'm like, this one would not sever my spine. That's the most painful thing. Like, I can live without my fingers. I can't, I don't even know how I just go about that pain of that.

SPEAKER_04 42:31

Well, you'd also be paralyzed. That was his he was like, You can do that and you won't walk away, but you'll live because you'd be paralyzed, theoretically speaking. But also, my question was, how's he gonna gauge if it got cut? How's he gonna know to like stop everything?

SPEAKER_05 42:45

Well, I think it was like a button. She had to press the blade with her neck far enough that it would stop it. But then I also I I was like literally questioning, I was like, if you sever your spine, don't you just die immediately? But no, I was I forgot that paralysis is a thing.

SPEAKER_07 42:58

Yeah. Oh no, it's okay. I thought the same thing. And then I'm like, Well, you I couldn't even think if all this like hot wax, you know, if you were being waterboarded by wax, which is kind of crazy, and you have this like cheesecloth or something on your face.

SPEAKER_01 43:12

When I was uh a younger teenager and uh started doing my eyebrows, my sister, I think when when the ability to wax your own eyebrows at home was really picking up in the industry, so she got this little cup of hot wax and she popped in the microwave and like she was very specific to follow the instructions. Uh, she let it cool down for a little while, stirred it up. I closed my eyes, I tilt my head back, and she puts the wax on the eyebrow, but our microwave was fucked up and she had no way of knowing without actually sticking her finger in there. And it completely dripped all the way down my eye onto my cheek, legitimately waxed my eye shut. And it was just so fucking painful. Sounds horrific. Like I had to wait for it to harden so that I could pull it off, and it ripped off some of my eyelids. Lashes. So no fucking thank you. This is not the trap I would do. To be fair, none of the traps, thank you.

SPEAKER_07 44:06

Yeah, I'm good. Especially the first one. I know there wasn't there's five of them, but I know if you guys also had a favorite as well.

SPEAKER_00 44:14

I have a favorite and I'm gonna throw it out there. It's it's Detective Boss. So Boz, I think had the most visually interesting death to me because it was so explosive. But also it set the tone for me that most people are not gonna get away from any of the traps in this film. I think in some saw films you think, oh, they're going to be wounded or injured or whatever, they're gonna walk away or limp away in some way. But the first kill showing that even though he made the sacrifice, he still got splattered was like, I don't think anyone's getting away from a trap in this film.

SPEAKER_04 44:47

But are you gonna live in a subway tunnel in the middle of a subway tunnel while a train's coming? I mean, I'm sure that you could, but there was absolutely what you said, Mac, a tone that you weren't gonna make it in this movie. And I actually didn't like that. I like Saw to feel like a an actual game. Again, very creepy, but I like it to feel like something that the people could win. Like I thought that the captain didn't feel like she could win, right? And then of course the first one I didn't feel like he could win. I don't know. I like a trap that feels like you can make it out. And it's it's the same with Detective Fitch. It was like he tried, he went for it. He was like there, it uh chomping down as soon as possible, still lost all his fingers, had to go through all that, and still died. I don't I like it when they have like an option, you know?

SPEAKER_01 45:31

Ren, remember when you said if this is the zombie apocalypse, take me out, I don't want to live through this shit. Yes. I think my stance is I don't give a fuck if I can escape the trap or not. I don't want to live with the trauma of that experience and all the therapy it's gonna take me to fucking work through that. Just let me go. Let my family have their insurance and just let it be.

SPEAKER_05 45:50

Which option kills me the fastest?

SPEAKER_04 45:52

I agree. Like, imagine you know how we feel about like a closed shower curtain in a bathroom now. Imagine you wake up one day and you're in a trap like this, and then you lose some ability or some appendage or something. It's not gonna be a good life, not at all. With that being said, my favorite kill is actually Peter, because I really thought he was gonna make it out of that one. And also at first thought, you're just like, oh, he's just like getting hit with a little bit of glass. It's like some, you know, some cuts. And then they show the glass like flying into the metal wall and getting stuck in there. And I'm like, oh, he's basically getting shot like 50 times, 100 times in his back, and that one hurt me physically. I'm not so sure about the effects where Chris Rock just casually had glass in his face and like giant chunks, and I was like, okay, sure. But nonetheless, that kill was one that I um enjoyed in a sense of I would never want to be a part of it.

SPEAKER_01 46:46

Yeah, that was actually my favorite kill, and I too had the note of like, okay, so dude, you're just gonna walk around with fucking glass in your face the rest of this movie. Thankfully it wasn't that long. But I'm gonna go my second favorite death, which is not one that we really see necessarily happen on screen, but rather we see what is used of the body, and that is Benny, who is skinned for the whole scam of uh Will's fake death. That that hand? The effects looked great. Oh, that hand they showed.

SPEAKER_05 47:15

So I was originally going to say that Detective Foz's kill was my favorite, which at first I was like, this seems like a really stupid trap, and I was kind of disappointed at first just because I was like, I I don't know, I don't really understand tongue anatomy in a real way.

SPEAKER_04 47:30

Oh, I can help. Your tongue is huge.

SPEAKER_05 47:33

Right, but I figured like it was just like at the tip, like a little piercing spot, so he could just like jump and it would just be like his tongue would be like split. You know how some people get their tongue like forked for I don't know, fun? Like a perforated tongue. Yeah, something like that. But when he fell and it was like the full base of the tongue came out too, like at the root, I was like, oh fuck, that's a lot of tongue meat. And that's when I was really like, okay, this is a this is a saw movie.

SPEAKER_04 47:55

Tongue meat is a phrase I could have lived without. Your tongue basically goes from obviously like where you can see it, like to the bottom of your jaw. Yeah. Thickness, and then depth-wise goes down your throat. And it is so disgusting.

SPEAKER_05 48:10

But I will go for my second favorite kill, which is Samuel L. Jackson. Um, because it was high drama, it was high production, it was literally like a giant marionette Samuel Jackson thing. It also gave me like blood vein puppet vibes, like from um Nightmare on Elm Street 3 Dream Warriors that we just reviewed.

SPEAKER_04 48:30

Is it the trap or his actual kill that you enjoyed?

SPEAKER_05 48:33

The whole moment of it all.

SPEAKER_04 48:35

I couldn't disagree more.

SPEAKER_05 48:37

Like, yeah, they were trying to do something like they were trying to make like a political sentiment, and like that part wasn't great about it, but the visual of it was like the most impactful as far as the kills go. Like seeing somebody just like the way he like slowly was like raised up by like all of his limbs, and then like it's also Samuel Jackson the whole time, so I was kind of laughing. Um so for me that was like a really big uh grand finale.

SPEAKER_00 49:00

It was very Dave Navarro, like in with his skin hanging thing that he does. That's the vibe I got from it where he gets the hook. He has like the hooks in his back or the piercings and they hang and he hangs from the ceiling and swings. It's like a thing, people are into it. I don't know, but I was just imagining Sam Jackson like swinging from the ceiling. You weren't imagining it, it happened.

SPEAKER_01 49:18

Yeah. I agree with the theatrics of that kill for sure. I really appreciated the realization that he he mirrors the little pig puppet with the little like badge for being the chief and all, and just like and I I really dislike in Saw movies when they flip back, back and forth, back and forth. One thing that I enjoyed in this is that it showed things that we didn't necessarily see beforehand that happened behind the scenes, which I know does happen in Saw, but for some reason it felt like it was done better this time around, and particularly the parallels between that puppet and then Samuel L. Jackson's character. I enjoyed the theatrics of it. I think where this movie hits for me looking at that death, I think it's less about like the political statement of everything and more just like the fucking humanity of it, and it was just really hard to watch. It was hard to watch someone else being gunned down, even though someone else is pulling the string. A man is pulling the strings, and he is just a victim of that. Uh, in a similar way that he's pulled the strings of so many other people's fates in this, you know, in this city with his actions, and it just goes to show that like there are so many sides to things, and and I think one of the things I'm disappointed about him dying and just walking away from that is knowing that he did what he what he did and he thought it was the right thing, but I felt like there could have been a lot more to unpack between him and Chris Rock before he finally died that would change Chris Rock's character. So I was bummed that he went out that quickly.

SPEAKER_04 50:55

I agree. And it also comes back around to that whole like not being able to survive thing, because the concept was supposed to be that if he used that one bullet to save his dad, he would make it and he w wasn't gonna make it. There wasn't any way for him to make it, more or less. I mean, I guess maybe Chris Rock could have figured something out, but generally speaking, that was set up for failure either way. And I I just don't like that. I don't like when it just feels like a it's rigged. I like when it feels like a game and not a trap. Yeah, exactly. Like I want to play a game. I think that just mirrors what the cops did to everyone in this city, though. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:29

Like everyone else's life has been rigged. Every case that they worked has been rigged. I think that that's like the point.

SPEAKER_04 51:34

Right. I also feel like they went for this like very heavy ending, and yet like a couple of the dirty cops like offenses that they chose were light. They were light compared to things that cops do. I don't know. They just went for a really heavy ending that didn't match the rest of this movie.

SPEAKER_07 51:52

I did like that visually at the end, um because I wasn't expecting him to come back onto the strings. Um it was sad. And Ryan, like, that's how I was how I felt throughout this movie. Like they didn't have, although it seemed like they had options, they didn't. And that's why I don't necessarily like um about previous people who have played Jigsaw that aren't the original Jigsaw. So they like the there's you cannot win. There's the angel one, uh, and they open up her chest. I think that's song three. Yeah, and you she couldn't, she literally couldn't get out of it, like at all. I hate that. Yeah, because it's like uh takes up like the fun. Yeah, but I I realize this is a different group of people that they're trying to um put these traps in, and like it's a different sort of uh message and a different sort of like consequence that's being brought upon them. But I have to admit, like, although there are only five the visuals, especially in that first scene, they kick off like amazing, and I don't necessarily see too much up close that I remember in Saws. Like, there isn't a lot of like, oh, let me see inside this, or it's just like kind of from far away. And I appreciated that so much because I don't get that. And Chris, yeah, you're right, it does look green all the time, but this looked just so great, especially that first kill. Wish there was a little bit more, but according to the director Darren, um, there was going to be a trap with someone getting their face cut off. Oh, yeah, I know. Disappointing, right? I would have loved that. It probably would have gave this a stronger slash. Jesus. But for the film to get an R rating, they actually had to take that out.

SPEAKER_05 53:32

I mean, Angie got a little bit of her face peeled off, but I wanted a full trap. We another trap would have really been great.

SPEAKER_01 53:38

I'm curious to see if that gets included in any um additional scenes or you know, deleted scenes, etc., on like a Blu-ray release or something like that.

SPEAKER_07 53:47

Yeah, like an unrated version or something.

SPEAKER_01 53:49

I don't plan to buy this on physical media, but uh someone let me know.

SPEAKER_07 53:53

I mean, I'll rent it if it's an unrated. I really want to see more of the Benny. Like I thought that was cool looking at that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:00

Benny from the block.

SPEAKER_00 54:01

That was something the director had to fight with the MPAA about was that particular the skinning scene. Um they came down hard on him about it. And he thought it was like very vital, of course, to the story because we know it's like a major turning point where we realize something is going quite differently than was portrayed originally. Uh, we've been scammed, if you will, but we all knew it was happening anyway. The characters didn't. But it's kind of interesting that it's such a gruesome scene and they had to like cut out some stuff because it was too gruesome. And it makes sense. I mean, apparently it was I was reading an article talking about like how much they had to cut out, and it runtime wise, it wouldn't really have increased it that much, maybe a few minutes, but think about like minutes of more torture and gore.

SPEAKER_07 54:41

I like that.

SPEAKER_00 54:42

I know. Yeah, it's it's it's up your alley. I think about this often.

SPEAKER_04 54:46

To be fair, I think you can tell that that scene has parts cut out because you get so much gore from the other traps, and then that one scene is just like a few little like skirts by it. You get a little hand, and that's kind of it. You don't get to see the the gruesome. Yeah, I didn't like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:04

I have I normally hate saw movies for how deliberately gritty they look, but there's something about this movie where the grittiness pays off. And I maybe it's just like it's super HD now because everything's shot in like 20k, but it's been like 17 years since the first Saw movie, and everything after that was like we're gonna be gritty in every way possible and greasy and all the stuff. But for some reason in this movie, like it was just so high death that the grittiness just made it look like super real, not documentary level or anything like that, but it just looks so crisp and so clean that it didn't come across as like just being dirty. It came across as people being legitimately sweaty or legitimately bloody.

SPEAKER_01 55:50

Yeah, it's it's less about it uh looking like a really grungy environment, more so that it was shot in a way that's completely cinematic, right? The way they use their depth of field very strategically, it felt more grown up, right? This isn't your daddy's saw. One of the things that contributes to that is their use of color in this movie, right? In the OG Saw movies, it's like you get one primary color, you get one secondary color, and that's how everything is tinted. That's how everything is graded. It's gonna be real yellow or real green. And I think, you know, looking at the lighting in this movie, there are so many, uh, so many moments when red and blue are competing with each other, and then you're getting some accents of like a green or a yellow, like a subtle hint as well. And then when you have that warmth of all the sweat, this movie is just shot in such a way that it still gives you that grungy, gritty feel. And I have never liked that, but it doesn't in a way that's so well executed, I can't help but be on its side.

SPEAKER_04 56:45

Yeah, this movie used their Phillips Hue lights so well, really impressive. I'm obviously joking, but seriously, the the lighting is the strongest point of this movie, especially visually. I think my favorite part is the visuals of the kills, if that makes sense. Like the lights in the tub with Detective Fitch are so like they just give you that that saw feeling of like, oh no, like something bad is happening. I don't know. There's like a a there's a lighting choice that's made that makes you feel like saw. And even though I think it's different here than other ones, it I don't it's very successful. I really, really loved the different, like like Chris is saying, the different colors, the different lightings, but for me, especially during the kills.

SPEAKER_07 57:29

Yeah, I definitely um in my notes, because you know you can't pull out your phone too much in the movie uh before you get yelled at, I did notice that first I mean within the first scene, I talked about it before, but um it's just vibrant, it's different, and like you, but you still have that grunginess of Saw. And even when they have the scene where Chris Rock is tied to the tub, and I was like, oh shit, don't bring me back to all of that. Like, this doesn't need to even then like kind of still had that green in it, but uh, you know, like I don't know. It's just it was it was an awesome scene, and then I think my favorite was when they still use the green, but they used it in a very awesome way, was when Chris Rock sees that the captain has been killed and is coming out of the um out of the room, and it's just like focused on him. The hallway is very narrow but very linear, and um, you have the backlights of the green. I just it visually was so stunning to me.

SPEAKER_01 58:33

The more serious he is, the harder he squints.

SPEAKER_04 58:36

Okay, on that note, can I share a least favorite visual element? Yes, it is literally Chris Rock trying to make his eyes look serious. Chris Rock's eyes in this movie. Maybe I'm the only person that was paying attention, but there's like a few scenes where you can tell he's trying really hard to put on a serious face. And even when he's like in the bathroom with the captain and he's like, You gotta let me do this. His eyes are as wide as they could possibly be, and it is hilarious. Chris Rock trying to have serious face didn't do it for me. Worst visual part of this movie.

SPEAKER_01 59:07

For me, it was Chris Rock, who's younger Chris Rock, who has like a backwards hat when he's in his office. Obviously, he's like dressed on the job, he had just turned his hat backwards in that moment. But it was like, this was many years ago, and he just for some reason looked like a grown-ass kid to me. I'm young, I put my hat backwards. Can't you tell? But his whole vibe, like Chris Rock as a detective, was working it the whole time, and his his fashion was there, his sideburns were there. I'm just a big fan of Chris Rock as an aesthetic in general.

SPEAKER_04 59:40

I am as well, but not as a serious person. The serious Chris Rock, I cannot. I the whole time I was like, I can see you trying not to laugh. I can see you trying to believe yourself.

SPEAKER_01 59:51

In the first scene we get of him talking about Forrest Gump, I was dying laughing. You didn't like the Twilight joke? I could have left without that, but the Forrest Gump joke was great.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:01

My favorite visual is kind of basic, but it's just the quality of the gore. And it's it's been a while since we've watched a movie that's modern enough to give you those like real, like this is probably what tongue meat looks like effects. But seeing it and just like the way that Saw will never like shy away from like lit making that shot linger, that really made me happy. Because like I wasn't thinking about like, oh, is this CGI? Is this practical? How is this done? I was thinking, like, oh no, that's someone's tongue and it's hanging there in the subway. I hate it. Um, so it like really just immersed me in the violence and the brutality of it all, which is what I wanted.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:37

So Paris, I think it's interesting that the the tongue is what did it for you. And obviously it's gruesome, right? But the fingers are what did it for me because when they're getting removed off a hand, like it's not just they don't just pop off like you know, like Lego pieces, it's like ripping through the hand and stuff. Yeah. The knuckle, it's like coming out, it's like just pierce pieces just being torn off, and not just like most movies where the fingers pop off like a like a toy or something.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:05

Yeah, everything was like pulled out from the root in this movie.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:08

Yeah, it was like that weird mesh on there that was like pulling it. It was so nasty.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:13

I think revisiting the the tongue meat for you, Paris, that kill, even though it wasn't my favorite, that whole bit actually contributed to my favorite scene in the movie, which was just the entire opening scene. Starting out, getting those fireworks, getting your homeboy who looks like he's from the first Jurassic Park movie, uh, walking through this.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:35

Okay, so you saw it too? I text Ryan and I thought, am I the only one?

SPEAKER_05 1:01:39

It was giving like very Laura Dern.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:41

But even going down into that whole uh seeing the pig for the first time, I wasn't a fan of the pig, but everything about how that movie how that scene was lit set the standard of what this movie was gonna be. And I believe Mac, you mentioned something earlier. And I think just the experience of that, starting off on such a better note than I think other Saw movies have, just aesthetically, it was for sure the standout moment of the movie.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:04

And it worked in multiple levels because even like the editing and the camera work didn't give us that whole like early 2000s you wouldn't steal a car thing. You know the ad I'm talking about, and it's got that very like 20 cuts, you know, on one subject kind of feel, and we didn't have to do that this time. Yeah. It's like the director learned after making what, six Saw movies or five Saw movies.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:23

I think what what it was is it's noticing this technique, and it used to be like, yeah, let's just go, go, go, go, go. And it's like, mmm, but now I know how to have restraint. Now I know how to use it uh effectively versus like my whole style being defined by the number of cuts I can get in.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:40

I believe in Inkmaster they call that finesse. That's the skill you're looking for. I've watched like 11 seasons of that show. Sorry. But my my favorite scene is right after that, Chris, and it's the heist scene. It's like you mentioned earlier, the forest gump joking robbery of the of the drug lord scene. That was one hilarious, and two, it it showed that Chris Rock was not just going to be here for comic relief. His character was was getting down and dirty right from the start, and I and I loved that, but it was probably the most fun scene of the whole movie.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:12

Well, you guys have managed to take both my favorite and second favorite scenes. Really? And I'm literally left with nothing now.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:18

Oh, well, add more to them.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:20

I uh they're great.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:21

10 out of 10.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:23

Agree with everything you said.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:25

Um, you guys were not a fan of the cuts. Um, I am a fan of the cuts. Um, because if you know me, I don't know what the hell is going on in a movie sometimes. I need a recap and I need cuts. I need you to bring me back from the beginning. I will say this one was quite obvious uh when they revealed the antagonist very clearly. I was like, oh, I knew that. Okay, I was I was right on the money, but I think because it's such a big part of the Saw franchise that I love, like it's just a Saw thing to do. That I love that they paid homage to it. Like, that's how I saw it as. I didn't see it as but it was enough without going overboard, but I still appreciated it. And then they brought back the music, and that's when I loved that scene.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:16

I have to appreciate the fact that they didn't like have him take the mask off on camera. He was just standing there, no mask, just here's who I am. You know, other other movies you get that moment where it's like they pull the mask off like Scooby-Doo, and it's like, actually, it was me all along, and you're like, oh wow. This one was cool. He's just like chilling, ready to go. I also like that too, but in front of like a table of KFC?

SPEAKER_05 1:04:38

What was that?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:39

He waited a while. Who knows how long it was gonna take for uh Chris Rock to put it together?

SPEAKER_05 1:04:44

Even killers get hungry. That was a really interesting choice. I was like, what are they doing with like all that food on that table? What is happening here? Are we gonna chill and like eat while we talk about these negotiations? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:55

I was mostly trying to figure out why Chris Rock was trying to escape this building theoretically and went up the steps with what seemed like no direction to do so. He made that decision on his own. Maybe he didn't, but they didn't show us anything that said, hey, go up the steps, and then he's just going up the steps.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:09

It's Star Wars logic, you have to get the higher ground.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:11

Or it's just you know like a haunted house where you just like move in the right direction, even when there sometimes aren't clear signs. I don't think up the steps is where I was gonna go after I after I witnessed a glass death.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:23

I don't know. He was also there to just figure shit out. Let's be real. I guess. I guess.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:28

He was spiraling. It's hard not to prioritize the kill scenes as my favorites because it is a Saw movie and those are the things I enjoy most. I thought it was really interesting the way that they showed the kill of Officer Fitch because they did it a little bit differently. We kind of saw how things started for him, and then we cut away, got more storyline, and then had like a cohesive like wrap up of what that was for him. Um, and seeing the body cam or like the police car footage of him at that. Traffic stop where the driver of the car just gave the cop the finger and it was immediately shot in the face and killed. That to me was like so brutal and so indicative of like the problem that's been like magnified in the past few years about like excessive use of force, all of these things. Um so then seeing that specific character who did that to somebody get their fingers ripped off in an attempt to live and then still die anyway was just very satisfying. And that was my favorite scene because it felt like that could have been its own like uh mini-movie, like a short film.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:34

Yeah. Yeah, looking at that moment in particular, seeing him gunned down that driver, seeing the witness get gunned down in his apartment, those things were just so freaking hard to stomach, right? And this movie is just all about police brutality and then inflicting brutality upon police who have inflicted that brutality in the past. I don't I definitely don't blame you for the you know that being your favorite scene. I think it's very much like your ups will come and here it is. And and Fitch just generally was just such an asshole.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:08

Such a douche.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:09

Looking at some of the flaws this movie has, you know, we've talked about it a bit before, but Will's fake death is the worst part of this movie for me because it makes it so apparent that A, he's not dead, B, it makes no sense for him to have been attacked by this killer if he's a rookie and hasn't done anything wrong. Even when they go to discover the body and they see this long corpse, like, okay, that body looks way taller than this actor ever was. As soon as you see that there are no identifiable features, it made it so obvious, and I don't know that I need anything to be crazy complex or anything like that, but I was really disappointed with that being the way they kind of just wrote this character off for a bit and expected us to think, oh no, they'll never see this one coming. It was it was it definitely did not uh put a good taste in my mouth.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:58

Yeah, I totally agree. And it's it for me, it was when he took the phone from Chris Rock and was like, Oh, I need to borrow your phone, my phone's dead. Like, okay, you're in a police precinct, your phone's literally not dead, it's impossible. And so in that moment, I knew, and then exactly what you're saying, that death was just like cool, like we don't believe you, and they didn't even like bother asking the question like he's a new cop. Why would someone be targeting him? You know, like they didn't even pretend to address it. And for me, I felt like insulted by how obvious the story was. And I know Mac, you feel like we were watching them find out and it wasn't for us to find out, but there was nothing that made that apparent to me. You know, it's I there's nothing that made it feel intentional. It felt like y'all just wrote a story so simple because like you don't think I'll be able to figure it out or something. I don't know. I I I literally felt offended personally that they wrote such a dumb, simple, easy to figure out story for this.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:58

Yeah, my Spidey Sends tingled as soon as he said, Yeah, your dad's the reason I want to do all this. I'm like, what is all this, man? What is all this? It's nothing, it's a career. Come on.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:07

Okay, so let me tell you what it was for me. When he pulled out that visibly like stock photo of his family that he conveniently wasn't in, like it literally could have had just like shutter stock written all over because I was like, that's clearly not your family. He's the guy from the Handmaid's Tale. This is obviously some kind of shady setup. And then when he's like talking on the phone and you hear the baby crying, but you don't see the baby, I was like, mm-hmm, this is just confirm, and because I don't see a damn baby, he doesn't have a family. He took that out of a Walmart frame and he has something. I didn't get the motive right, but that character being uh like a reveal was absolutely a slap in the face, like you were saying, Ryan. They were telling us that we're idiots.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:41

Can I say the moment that I knew that that character was suspect?

SPEAKER_04 1:09:44

Can I pick it? Can I guess it before you say it? Yes. Is it when he said randomly out of nowhere, well, my wife's got me in this counseling?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:51

Nope. Dang it, okay, way before that. Okay. As soon as he was brought in to be the partner.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:57

And he's the rookie, and he's not a big jerk like everyone else in the station. I was like, Oh, here we go.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:03

Because you've seen a cop movie with 30 cops before.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:05

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:05

Yeah. Wow, impressive.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:07

Because you knew from the beginning, okay, a cop was targeted, first kill of the movie, right? And now we're getting into Chris Rock, he's a cop, here's this other stuff going on with cops. You know it's gonna be a cop. You knew it just from from watching every other movie you've ever watched. You knew it was gonna be a cop. It was gonna be done on the inside, and here's someone on the inside who's not really on the inside because they're brand new. And I as soon as the partner came in, it wasn't like you're bitten you're being partnered with that guy, and he's gonna be like, Oh, that guy, he sucks. No, it was like, oh, I don't even know this person. Oh, you don't know this person? This mysterious new guy who's top build from the handmaid's tale.

unknown 1:10:40

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:41

My only the only other possibility is it could have been Samuel L. Jackson in some realm. It's literally those two things. I considered that too. Yeah. But I mean, it was obviously like he was gonna be a part of it, but not the the one.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:55

He was given a bad frame job, like somewhere in the movie where it's like, oh, he has a magnifying glass and a lamp. Maybe he's working on things.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:02

Here's what I wanted to see. I think my only other person who like could have been a possible backup was the female detective Kraus. Oh. Only because she split up from Fitch and then just like what didn't report that he'd been missing and that she hadn't heard from him. Like, what the fuck? I think if there's a sequel, she's gonna be on it at some point. But I had hoped, like, going back, I want to see there be some footage of like a fake attack on Will. And Krause would have been the kind of like the second killer in the screen movies, right? Who kind of like stage an attack on one of the people to throw people off the scent. I think if they had played with that a little bit, it would have softened the blow of that like prediction. It could have like thrown things off for just for just a bit. I feel like she was a missed opportunity.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:48

And once again, I just need to complain about Will standing at the top of this building saying, Don't you want to be on my team? Like, no, bro. That was the least convincing argument I've ever heard to join anything. He's he had no emotion. He's like, I I that was my dad. Like, it didn't feel like it was your dad. It didn't feel like it at all. It didn't feel like you cared about this. It doesn't feel like it was hard to get into this job. It felt very simple. I don't know. There was no emotion there. I'd never believed a killer less in my whole life.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:16

He should have offered free chicken nuggets.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:18

Then that would have won you over. Like Burger King.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:22

Hey, I got 80 nuggets. Do you want some of this?

SPEAKER_07 1:12:25

Honestly, I gotta share more convincing than what he did. Yeah, it wasn't convincing at all. I mean, I know everyone's mentioned it, but the voice of this like new killer, not a fan. Not a fan of the look, not a fan. I just not a fan. I think they're I'm so ingrained in some saw things that you know I'm just they give me it. I like it. It's the same thing. That's why I'll wash all eight.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:49

You just always want a big Mac. You don't need a quarter pounder. You're not interested in anything else on the middle.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:54

I don't like when you come out with some other thing with different sauce and different meat, and I don't know, like you just want what you get. I just want my classic junior bacon cheeseburger. There you go. Liking it since middle school and still liking it. So I don't know. It was just interesting because I was not what I was expecting when that camera turned on. I was like, that voice, and I thought it was goofy at first, but the more I listened to it, the more creepier it got. So it did have some effect towards me, but not enough to make me like it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:22

I'm gonna pick out something as my worst part of the movie that I don't really hate that much, but thinking back to it now because if it's been a couple hours since I watched it, the boxes, the gifts, the wrapped-up pieces.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:33

Oh, the Tiffany's boxes. The Tiffany's box.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:36

The Tiffany's boxes. So the reason that I think I now kind of dislike that is we were talking about it earlier with Seven, where it feels like a trope in and of itself. The gift boxes of gift-wrapped human body parts.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:50

Everything in this movie was a trope. Everything. The car, the outfit, the conversations, every single thing. And the fact that they didn't say what's in the box when they got delivered, the giant box, honestly, hate it.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:04

Yeah, it should have been a head in there, just saying. That part was was okay when I was watching it because we see it in a lot of different serial killer movies. It's like here's a little trophy, and the giving of those parts to the police is in and of itself a trophy. But I feel like there could have been another more interesting delivery vehicle for telling the police, I gotcha. But that's it. That's all I have to complain about.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:27

In my rating, I I had plenty to complain about, Mac. Um, but truly, even though I slashed this movie, like I said, the the overall story just isn't great. Um, but for me, the worst part of it all is just how much time we spend like rehashing the most cliche tired, like cop workplace tropes and dialogue. Like, first, like the I'm a I'm a tough cop and I don't need a partner. Like, no, I don't care about that. Just do whatever you're being told, I guess. Um, but then also like fighting over like whose case this is. I'm like, what are we doing here? Like, this is a pissing contest. Like, you're clearly not that invested in like what is actually going on if your ego is like making you fight over, like, oh, but this was my case first. Like, ew, go lie down. It was just all too much. I was just I did not give a shit. And we spent so much time watching them in that, like, what's it called? Like the inside the police station. I was just like, get me out of here.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:23

Yeah, I actually didn't mind the arguing about the case because from the moment that he accuses Fitch of like, oh, did you actually call her? Did you text her? Did you use an emoji? He had an emotional investment on top of all like the chaos and the mistrust and everything that he's been through, he had a personal relationship with that detective and his family, and so it felt very like me against the world. And while I would totally agree with you if it were like some other random murder, the fact that it was his friend, I totally bought into um into his insistence on wanting that case.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:02

But then also, like, shouldn't they take him off the case specifically because it is too close to him? Isn't that like a theme?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:07

Then we wouldn't have a movie.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:08

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:10

That's not a trope. That's not a trope. Thanks. That's not a trope.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:14

I know I have to do a best part here, but really quickly I'm gonna do a worst part because I'm annoying like that. Um, you guys have basically already hit the one I was gonna say, which is this movie is a zero out of ten for originality for me. It is 100% movie trope, bad cop movie trope. Like it it it that's all there is here. But the one of the little worst parts for me that's like such a small detail but just drove me nuts. It's the conversation with the detective's wife in the backyard where she mentions this escalade or SUV, and then later the camera stays on the shot of the SUV at the church, and it means nothing. I mean, sure, I'm sure there's some way you could like put it into the story, but there's like a few, like like this movie was very heavy on like the lingering on details thing, and I was just like, are we not gonna talk about the SUV there that you clearly see? And then later it wasn't the SUV anymore, and I was just like, Why'd you guys do that to me? What was the point here?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:09

Uh, they were trying to uh, you know, pull one over on you and give you a little misdirection. But the problem is it's very obvious who the killer's gonna be, so none of that matters.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:18

Yeah, at that point we already knew who the killer was, so I was like, okay, well, like, do you want me to think he was like there at the same time or something? I don't know. Anyway, that was dumb. I didn't like little stuff like that. However, I'm gonna say my best part is actually the new puppet. I actually really liked it. Alexis Hastings. Interesting. Even the puppets in jail.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:37

That's a hot take.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:38

I liked the new little like character because I feel like he has a lot of the same like fun of Jigsaw, because this isn't Jigsaw. This isn't a Saw movie. I didn't like the spiral on the wall so much. Like I got real overseeing the spiral, especially as Marcus Banks walks through and he just like gets to a wall that's just covered in spirals, and I'm like, okay, we get the point. It's a spiral, got it. But I don't know. I like the I like the the the puppet. Trash.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:06

For me, it's like the the original Billy Puppet somehow moved on its own in a way that was really chilling. But when it's a marionette, it's kind of like limited because like a marionette really has no hope of like riding a tricycle down a hallway towards me. You know what I mean? There's always gotta be somebody there.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:22

Give it a chance, it'll work on it, don't worry. It becomes possessed.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:25

Okay, I'm open to seeing more range from the marionette.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:29

I I like that apparently on set they referred to him as Mr. Snuggles. And Trick or Treat Studios is releasing a replica. So, Ryan, got you your Christmas gift. Uh please, no, thank you.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:43

You also have to like imagine the killer like underneath that bridge in front of that car, like setting up his phone and then like diddling this little puppet, pulling these strings, like to make the video.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:53

I imagine it was motorized. I'm sure it was motorized.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:56

Wait, there's a it's a marionette, you don't have to diddle it. That's like exactly what moving a marionette is. No, hand puppets, you have to diddle.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:02

No, I'm pretty sure it's still a diddle. It's just an air diddle.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:05

Diddle the strings.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:06

A diddle from above, if you will. A diddle from above.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:09

I'm so I'm so sad to hear that you didn't like the spirals because I thought the spirals, again, were like another shining star visually, especially that scene right before Samuel L. Jackson sees the writing on the wall and he enters that room. He has a flashlight, and there's just so much red and blue like competing with each other and a little bit like yellow and green in the background, and you just have like it's right after he sees that wall of spirals. I didn't enjoy Will's explanation of jigsaw is right, the spiral, a symbol of progress. I'm sure that's probably referenced in some Saw movie I haven't seen. It did make sense. I kind of just like the look of it, and I could have done without the explanation.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:45

I don't see progress or growth at all when I look at a spiral. It literally doesn't make sense.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:50

Yeah, I see shit running out of control. If anything, you're just going in circles.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:54

There's no growth.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:56

Never-ending exhaustion. And now that I've had some a mixed bag of things to say, I mean, overall, I don't think it's one I'm probably ever gonna watch again.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:06

This is the first Saw movie I would watch again. I honestly can't wait for it to hit streaming so I can give it another go and see how I feel about it at home. But the other Saw movies, aside from Saw 1, Saw 1 has rewatch value. All the other Saws, nah. Nah, just not for me.

SPEAKER_07 1:20:21

You don't like the one there in the house?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:23

No.

SPEAKER_07 1:20:23

Oh, I love that one.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:24

Yeah, Saw 2, Saw 3, not into it. Max really on one tonight. No, because this is more this is more up my alley. This is more of just like a serial killer movie. This could have been completely unrelated to Saw. They could have removed the character and the whole book of Saw thing, and just it could have just been its own thing. It could have just been the spiral killer. And I would have been into it as a serial killer movie, as a thriller. But because it's related, it it to me actually elevates Saw in my eyes.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:54

The franchise.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:55

I literally have no idea who the person sitting across from the table is right now.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:01

Like you get married one time, you come back all different.

SPEAKER_07 1:21:05

You get married once and change your whole character. You just start hacking stuff you slashed and slashing stuff you hacked. You've changed, Mac.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:14

It's a topsy turvy world.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:16

Yeah, I got bad news, Mac. I don't feel the way you feel at all.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:20

That's okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:21

I'm not re-watching this. If I want to watch uh the movie that this is basically trying to be, I'm gonna watch Seven. If you need to watch something, go watch Seven. It's an incredible movie, really lovely. There's not necessarily traps, but there are games being played. It's amazing. And if I want to watch Saul, I'll go watch Saul. This is not the one for me.

SPEAKER_07 1:21:42

You can do both, but not this one, not the third. I don't know if I'll be adding this to my lineup because it's so off-brain for Saul. I would be happy to see if they continued with this, um, and it kind of had a few in this series as well, and it'd be more crime related and more not as a horror tropey. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:03

So they they the director did bring this up. I don't know if you guys have read some of the interviews about this, but they didn't want to say, like, you know, very distinctly, like, an entire group of people is horrible. They didn't want to just come out and be like, we're gonna make five movies now about how the cops cops are evil and they should we should kill them or something, right? So they wanted to show both, you know, we have heroes, we have villains, we need to show decent guys, bad guys, etc. Right. And he did say that they're gonna try to do this with other institutions as well. Like all these other things that need change, whether it's Wall Street, Big Pharma, yeah, Paris. You you knew it, you knew what needed to change, big pharma. Um, so religious organizations, all this sort of stuff. So I think it'd be interesting because the ratings right now, who knows if they're gonna get uh the green light to go forward with it. But I think it would be interesting to see that continue where it's other groups that they're they're going after corruption. I do like that as an idea.

SPEAKER_07 1:22:55

I love that as an idea.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:56

Yeah, it's like Saw is trying to also be the purge and have statements about things.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:03

I actually am not really into the idea. I like looking at people as they suck individually, and I can see where this one was trying to go with making a political statement, and I don't really want them to keep going because I didn't like how they did it this time.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:17

So you want to see movies about shitty individual humans, but not movies about shitty systems that oppress people?

SPEAKER_04 1:23:23

I don't want to see a political statement of it all. That's where I'm like, uh I'm good. I didn't like what they did this time, you know? It's just me though, evidently. I'm here on an island by myself. It's okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:33

No, you and I again, so many people agree with you. People are like tearing this movie apart. It's like very extreme. So I'm even surprised that for as extreme as some of the reactions are generally, I'm surprised that a few of us have been kind of like lukewarm on it, like kind of in the middle seeing both sides of it. And I think one thing that I appreciate about this is how much of a deviation and difference it is to bring more people into the genre. Like there are so many people who would never really give Saw a chance, like myself included, aside from that first movie. Uh, but this just gives them a an entry point, give them a different hook into this adventure without having to go through all the intense torture, intense traps that maybe would have been off-putting for them in general. So I'm a fan of a franchise stepping up and doing something different in the same universe as a beloved franchise without trying to go back and remake, like, let's go back, pretend Jigsaw is something entirely different. Let's start from square one, let's reboot the whole thing. Uh I I wasn't a fan of like how Rob Zombie did that with Halloween, for example. I can admire that it gave people a new entry point to enjoy Halloween, but I think this did it right, where you're doing something different, it's adjacent to, in relation to, but not replacing what already exists, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:54

That does make sense. Um but what didn't make sense, Chris, is earlier when you said that you enjoyed the use of flashback in this Saw movie as opposed to others, um, because they really for me it was the same exact thing they always do. And because of the heavy use of flashback, I feel like I have already re-watched this movie, so I won't be doing that again. Um I do think Ryan deserves credit though because she did actually watch this movie twice.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:19

Yeah, that's such a good point.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:21

Yeah. So here's the thing about the flashbacks, though. This one went back and added extra detail into it, and it it just felt different. Like it felt like it was done in a way that set itself apart, whereas I felt like previous song movies that we've seen just shows you exactly what happened, and it feels like it's just too much all at once.

SPEAKER_05 1:25:42

I feel that. For me, the one that killed me was like maybe 30 minutes in, we get our first flashback, and I was like, no, too soon. Not not enough time has passed for you to flash back to the beginning of the movie.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:52

Truly, I don't I don't even give a fuck about any of the flashbacks. Though I think the reason why I feel positively about it is the flashbacking parallel of Samuel L. Jackson's death with the marionetting puppet lifting the gun. Like that is what it that's what did it and it helped me see it in a different light. But flashbacks to just retread plot points generally are not successful.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:14

I did like them when they were supplemental. When they added value. When one of the kills started and then it we moved on, we didn't actually see the kill, and then we come back to it later and we like flashback to that kill and then we see it all the way through, like that was good. Or when we get flashbacks to memories, so things we hadn't seen yet, but that were Zeke's memories that he was flashing back to. Like that, I feel like it was an effective use of a flashback, even though I hate most of them. I think everything should be chronological. But I I feel like if you're gonna do it, at least like add something to the film. And like you said, Chris, don't just repeat things that we've already seen because we just saw it. There's no need for that. But I I like when they like went back, yeah, you might see like 10 seconds, but then they added on a whole nother minute.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:55

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that's the thing for me, like this felt different, it felt fresh. I haven't seen every Saw movie, so maybe those flashbacks do get better, but I also have this like bias because I don't like how a lot of the flashbacks are done in the early Saw films, and then James Wan will flashback like the Dickens in any movie he does, and it drives me nuts because it's always so unnecessary. Just not a fan. So we certainly talked about a lot tonight. Obviously, this movie has earned four slashes and one hack. And while Ryan may be alone on this episode hacking the movie firmly, uh, she's definitely not alone, and we know that so many of you out there agree with her. Jordan clearly does. We want to know what you think. We want to know what your stance is. Did you like this deviation from Saul? Did you like Saw and like this film? Were you like Mac and I who dislike Saw generally and actually enjoyed this? We want to know what you think. Keep in mind there are a number of ways you can reach out to us, starting with our website, hackerslash.com.

SPEAKER_07 1:27:51

And on our social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:54

And if you see growth in spirals, you can reach out to our Hackerslash Hotline. You can leave us a voicemail at 757-606-0128 or visit hacker slash.com slash contact to send us an audio message.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:05

Or if you're stuck in a spiral of flashing back to flashbacks of flashbacks, you can send us an email to feedback at hackerslash.com.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:12

If you've enjoyed listening to this episode, consider becoming one of our patrons like Jonathan. You can visit patreon.com slash hacker slash to earn cool perks for as low as $1 a month.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:21

We'll see you next time, folks, and remember you can give a woman 600 Tuesdays. It ain't worth three Saturday nights. Bye.