Whereas Saw 3D crumbles under the weight of failing to swing for the fences, Saw V suffers by feeling relatively needless. Its predecessor, Saw IV, had the gift/curse of having to find a way to continue the series in the wake of Jigsaw's death at the end of Saw III, which it managed to sidestep by taking place concurrently with that film. With the fifth film, the series had no choice but to continue moving forward with both its timeline and its newest Jigsaw apprentice, Matt Hoffman. Unfortunately, Hoffman had to carry on the series from under the far more interesting shadow of Jigsaw and Shawnee Smith's Amanda while simultaneously being devoid of a personality worth being intrigued by. Though Scott Patterson's Agent Strahm spends the film uncovering Hoffman's past after a pretty slick scene in which he manages to survive a water-based trap, the backstory isn't entirely engrossing in light of the fact actor Costas Mandylor doesn't have the same gravitas as Bell. While the film does offer a number of callbacks to the previous films -- and if there's one thing that sets the Saw series apart from other horror franchises, it's that it excels in maintaining a pretty stellar continuity -- it fundamentally feels like nothing more than a water treading entry. Unlike the previous films, the B-story plot involving a group of connected people caught in an underground game feels too detached from the rest of the narrative, more perfunctory than necessary even after it's tied together during the last act, just like Saw V's placement in the series.
Writer, film enthusiast, part-time gamer and watcher of (mostly) good television located on the fringe of Los Angeles, who now has his own website at www.highdefgeoff.com!
