Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Bookmonkey Saw: Day 16



On to the fifth Saw film now, and it begins exactly where the fourth left off – many people have died horrible deaths (again) and a plot twist has left the audience wondering exactly who is doing the killing now and why(again).

Directed by David Hackl (who was the production designer for Saw II – IV) Saw V strives to answer exactly that question, using flashbacks to the first Saw film (again) and for the first time in the series, the second film as well.  In this film the victim running through the gauntlet is once again a group (5 this time), and the story flashes between them and the parallel story of an FBI agent who found an unexpected way out of a trap and is right on the trail of the new Jigsaw Killer.

By this time in the series, much of the focus has shifted from story to the horrible death traps used by the killer, but as my interests don’t run that way, neither will my blog posts.

An interesting note my wife pointed out to me was that the heavy use of dioramas in the series (first in the original film, but most strongly in the fifth), looks an awful lot like those used by “The Miniature Killer” in the seventh season of the CBS television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation which lasted for the majority of the season and began airing about a month before the release of Saw V. 

For the next two posts I’ll be looking beyond the films, following the logic that “…if the film and television industries invest so heavily in previews, bonus materials, merchandise, and their ilk, so should we as analysts..” (Gray, 2010, p. 8). So get ready to learn about the first Saw videogame and the VH1 Reality TV series Scream Queens.

Gray, Johnathan (2010) Show Sold Separately: promos, spoilers, and other media paratexts. New York , NY : New York University Press.

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