Ten years after the death of the infamous John Kramer, bodies begin turning up around the city, each bearing the signature gruesome wounds of the Jigsaw Killer. As detectives race against time to stop the slaughter, all evidence points to the impossible: the man who died a decade ago has somehow returned to reclaim his title, or a new apprentice has emerged to continue his twisted game.
Information |
|
|---|---|
Language |
English |
Country |
United States |
Premiere date |
October 27, 2017 |
Running time |
92 minutes |
Genre |
Horror Mystery Thriller Crime |
Budget |
$10,000,000 |
Box Office |
$102,944,253 |
Crew |
|
Directed by |
The Spierig Brothers |
Produced by |
Gregg Hoffman Oren Koules Mark Burg |
Written by |
Josh Stolberg Peter Goldfinger |
Music by |
Charlie Clouser |
Cinematography |
Ben Nott |
Edited by |
Kevin Greutert |
Production Co. |
Twisted Pictures |
Distributed by |
Lionsgate |
Top Cast |
|
|
|
Official Trailer |
|
Movie Collection |
Movie Order: #08 in Saw Collection
|
The Plot
The Rooftop Standoff
The nightmare begins with a chaotic pursuit across the city as criminal Edgar Munsen flees from police units. Cornered and desperate, Edgar scrambles onto a rooftop, clutching a remote detonator trigger. Surrounded by officers with weapons drawn, he frantically demands to speak with Detective Brad Halloran, claiming that he must make the call to prevent the deaths of five people trapped in a sadistic game. When Halloran arrives alongside his new partner, Detective Keith Hunt, the tension spikes. Edgar, trembling, insists that the "game has begun" and he cannot drop the remote.
In a moment of panic, Edgar pulls the trigger. The police reaction is immediate; gunfire erupts. Although Halloran shouts for the officers to aim for the device in Edgar’s hand to neutralize the threat, a bullet strikes Edgar squarely in the chest. The criminal collapses, the remote falls from his grip, and he slips into unconsciousness, leaving the detectives with a cryptic warning and no location for the victims he claimed to be saving.
The Bucketheads and the Blood Sacrifice
The scene shifts to a grim, industrial barn where five unconscious captives awaken. They are lined up against a wall, each wearing a metal bucket helmet secured by a chain that leads to a wall of rotating buzzsaws. As they stir, the familiar, rasping voice of John Kramer—the Jigsaw Killer—plays over the loudspeakers. He informs them that to survive, they must offer a sacrifice of blood to atone for their sins.
Suddenly, the chains retract, dragging the five prisoners toward the spinning blades. As the saws slice into the wall, four of the captives realize the instructions were literal: they allow the blades to graze their bodies, shedding enough blood to trigger the release mechanism on their shackles. They scramble away to safety. However, the fifth prisoner remains unconscious throughout the ordeal. Failing to wake up in time to make the sacrifice, he is dragged relentlessly into the buzzsaws, leaving the survivors horrified as they advance to the next chamber.
The Poison and the Purse
In the second room, the four survivors—Anna, Ryan, Mitch, and Carly—are confronted with their pasts. A tape reveals that one of them, Carly, is a thief who snatched a purse from an asthmatic woman. The woman died struggling for breath because her emergency inhaler was inside the stolen bag. To proceed, the group must identify the correct antidote for a poison that has been injected into Carly’s system.
Three suspended syringes hang before them: one contains the antidote, one contains saline, and the third contains excruciating hydrofluoric acid. As chains begin to hoist the group toward the ceiling to hang them, Carly panics and refuses to choose, paralyzed by the fear of injecting the acid. With time running out and the nooses tightening, Ryan violently intervenes. He grabs all three syringes and stabs them into Carly’s neck simultaneously. The acid takes immediate effect, melting Carly’s face and killing her instantly. The remaining three are released, and they discover the number "3.53" on the correct needle—the exact amount of money Carly had found in the stolen purse. This code unlocks the door to the next section.
Resurrecting the Dead
Back in the city, the police investigation takes a dark turn. The body of the man who died in the buzzsaws appears in a public park, followed shortly by Carly’s mutilated corpse. Detective Halloran and Hunt are baffled; the modus operandi is identical to Jigsaw, yet John Kramer has been dead for ten years. Suspicion falls on the morgue staff: pathologist Logan Nelson, a combat veteran and widower, and his assistant, Eleanor Bonneville, who possesses an unsettling obsession with Jigsaw's history.
While Halloran pressures Logan, suspecting he is mimicking the killer, the public begins to fear that Kramer is still alive. To settle the matter, the police commissioner orders the exhumation of John Kramer’s grave. When the coffin is raised and opened, the remains inside are not those of the Jigsaw Killer. Instead, they find the fresh corpse of Edgar Munsen, who had been abducted from the hospital shortly after the rooftop shooting. The discovery sends shockwaves through the department.
The Silo and the Sacrifice
Inside the barn, the game intensifies. Ryan attempts to cheat by breaking through a door marked "No Exit," but the floor gives way, trapping his leg in a tangle of razor-sharp wires that tighten when he moves. Anna and Mitch, seeking another way out, enter a grain silo, but the door slams shut behind them. Grain begins to pour in, threatening to bury them alive. The only way to stop the flow is for Ryan to pull a release lever, but doing so will retract the wires around his leg violently.
As Anna and Mitch scream for help, suffocating under the rising grain, Ryan faces a brutal choice. Summoning his courage, he pulls the lever. The wires shear through his flesh, severing his lower leg completely, but the grain stops, and his fellow captives are saved. Anna manages to reach Ryan and attempts to stem the bleeding from his stump.
The Motorcycle Trap
While Anna tends to Ryan, Mitch discovers a tape recorder intended for him. The recording exposes his sin: he knowingly sold a motorcycle with faulty brakes to John Kramer's nephew, resulting in the young man's death. Suddenly, Mitch is snagged by a coil and hoisted upside down towards a massive, spiral-shaped funnel blade powered by a motorcycle engine. To survive, he must reach a brake handle at the bottom of the funnel, risking his limbs.
Anna frantically attempts to sabotage the machine, jamming a metal pipe into the spinning wheel to buy Mitch time. The mechanism halts momentarily, giving Mitch hope, but the engine's torque snaps the obstruction. The blade resumes its spin, and Mitch is lowered into the funnel, where he is shredded to death before Anna and Ryan’s eyes.
The Jigsaw Fanatic
In the outside world, Eleanor reveals her secret to Logan: she has built a hidden studio filled with perfect replicas of Jigsaw’s traps. She believes the killer is still out there and wants to help solve the case. Unbeknownst to them, Detective Hunt has followed them and photographs the studio. He informs Halloran, who issues an arrest warrant for both coroners. During the arrest, Logan desperately tries to convince Hunt that Halloran is the true mastermind, citing the detective's corrupt past and the convenient way witnesses against him tend to disappear.
Eleanor and Logan are released due to lack of concrete evidence but decide to investigate on their own. Eleanor identifies the location of the current game based on soil samples from the victims: the abandoned Tuck Pig Farm. They rush to the location, with Halloran in hot pursuit.
The Final Test of Character
At the farm, the timeline of the game reaches its climax. Anna and Ryan, the last two survivors, are shackled in a milking room. A hooded figure approaches and reveals himself to be John Kramer—alive and in the flesh. He confronts them with their darkest secrets. Anna, a former neighbor of Kramer, smothered her crying baby in a fit of rage and framed her husband, driving him to suicide. Ryan caused a car accident that killed his friends and let another man take the fall.
Kramer places a shotgun between them with a single shell, telling them that the key to their freedom is inside the shell and that they have the instinct to do things "backwards." He leaves them to choose. Anna, misinterpreting the clue, grabs the gun and aims it at Ryan, believing she must kill him to survive. As she pulls the trigger, the gun backfires—rigged to shoot the person holding it. Anna is killed instantly. Ryan, devastated, breaks open the destroyed shotgun to find the melted remains of the keys that were hidden inside the shell. By trying to kill Ryan, Anna destroyed their only means of escape. Ryan is left to die, shackled and bleeding.
The Twist and the Confession
In the present day, Logan and Eleanor arrive at the barn, followed by Halloran. A confrontation ensues; Eleanor escapes, but Halloran and Logan brawl until both are knocked unconscious. They awaken wearing laser-cutter collars fixed around their necks. A voice tells them they must confess their sins to survive. Halloran forces Logan to go first. Logan confesses that he mislabeled John Kramer’s X-rays years ago, delaying the cancer diagnosis that could have saved him. Despite the confession, the lasers activate, and Logan appears to be gruesomely killed.
Terrified, Halloran confesses to his years of corruption, admitting he let criminals go free for bribes and brutalized others. Suddenly, Logan stands up, unharmed. He reveals that his "death" was a trick; the laser collar was a dummy. He explains the shattering truth: the game the police have been investigating—the one with Anna, Ryan, and Mitch—took place ten years ago. Logan was the "sleeping man" in the buckethead trap who survived because John Kramer decided he didn't deserve to die for an honest mistake. Kramer took Logan on as his first apprentice.
Logan reveals that he recreated the game in the present day using criminals Halloran had let walk free (the bodies Halloran found). The entire setup was a trap to elicit Halloran's confession on tape. Logan reveals that Edgar Munsen killed Logan's wife because Halloran let him go. With his revenge complete and the confession recorded, Logan tells Halloran that he "speaks for the dead." He activates the laser collar. As Logan walks away and slams the door, the lasers slice Halloran’s head into pieces.
