JIGSAW (2002)

DIRECTED & WRITTEN BY Don Adams & Harry James Picardi

STARRING - Barratt Walz as Colin,  Aimee Bravo as Tawny,  Mia Zifkin as Val,  Arthur Simone as Eddie,  Maren Lindow as Louise,  James Palmer as Todd,  Mark Volmers as Sneaky Pete,  David Wesley Cooper as Art,  Marisa Adams as Kimmy,  Brian Ellis as Jigsaw.

PLOT - A group of art students are set an assignment for thier end of term project. Thier lecturer - Colin - gives them a piece each of a tailor's dummy to work on. The students are tasked to turn each part into a sculpture that has something of themselves in it.

At the end of term, the students all gather together one night at a local Roadhouse/dive bar to unveil thier separate pieces and join the constituent parts of the dummy (nicknamed Jigsaw) together. 

The students, at the suggestion of a drunken Colin, ritualistically burn Jigsaw. This action however awakens something sinister.

Jigsaw regenerates his burnt shell and comes to life and he's not happy with Colin and the students for burning him. Not happy at all...

PERFORMANCES - Before we start, let me get one thing straight - this film has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the Saw series of films - which also has a villain called Jigsaw and a movie of the same name. In researching for this review online I've noticed that quite a surprisingly large amount of people have made this mistake, so just thought I'd best clear it up so we're all on the same page.

The acting on the whole is pretty decent for a B-movie, nothing that's going to win any Oscars you understand, but serviceable enough to tell the story.

Barratt Walz is probably the best out of the bunch playing the sleazy college lecturer Colin, a man who isn't averse to using his position of responsibility to hit on vulnerable and/or naive female students. He starts off trying it on with one of the younger students until she blows him out of the water and instead sets his sights on the slightly older (but married, albeit unhappily) Louise (Maren Lindow). Basically Colin is the type of sleazebag you look forward to seeing taken down a peg or three. Needless to say it doesn't end well for him.

The other standout performance comes from Aimee Bravo playing Tawny. 

Tawny is a survivor of sexual abuse from her father. At their wits end from the abuse Tawny and her sister made a suicide pact. Her sister went first and succeeded whilst Tawny lost her bottle and couldn't go through with it. As a result Tawny has become haunted by what she perceives to be her own cowardice. To hide her insecurities she has adopted an overtly sexual persona (she spends the entirety of the film in a variety of sexy outfits - funnily enough she's the only female in the film that Colin DOESN'T attempt to hit upon). 

I'm not entirely sure if a survivor of child abuse would become so sexualised in reality but let's face it - we're dealing with a movie where a tailor's dummy comes to life, so clearly documentary style realism WASN'T a consideration for the filmmakers here.

The other characters are also pretty well defined  and the film goes to great lengths to let us get to know them over a drunken night out before the bodies stat piling up (and pile up they do).

You'll probably notice I've not mentioned Jigsaw himself here. He's played by a guy called Brian Ellis but he doesn't have a great deal of personality (he IS just an animated killer dummy after all) but he's pretty proficient at offing pretentious art students in classic slasher movie style, really that's all you need in this type of film.

SEX & VIOLENCE - We get a very sexy (and suggestive) dance scene from Tawny at one point, dressed in a cowboy hat and knee-high boots, she basically gives the Jigsaw mannequin a lap dance, much to the delight of the bunch of pissed redneck types who are watching.

The kills vary in thier level of gore. Some cut away at the last moment so we don't actually see anything, whilst others go for full on in your face splatter, it's an inconsistent tone but it kind of works.

The two most gorily explicit deaths are Todd (James Palmer) who is strangled to death by barbed wire whilst having an outdoor piss, and Eddie (Arthur Simone - who looks uncannily like a young version of ex-Doctor Who Peter Capaldi) who is impaled by a buzzsaw whilst trying to escape in his car (Jigsaw is hiding in the backseat in classic Michael Myers style).

SFX - Jigsaw is of the low budget "man in a suit" school of monsters but he works well enough. The gore (that we see) is pretty well done.

RATING - I have quite a soft spot for this movie, I originally saw it on one of those cheap DVD multipacks of horror films that you used to be able to pick up from stores about fifteen to twenty years ago and it was the standout movie in that pack.

It's not going to set the world on fire and it's no classic for sure but it's pleasantly entertaining and I like the atmosphere in the bar where it's mainly set (it's the type of bar i'd happily drink in). The characters are nicely built up and the film manages to create a cosy and intimate atmosphere before things start getting bloody.

All in all a decent little film. 4 animated killer dummies out of 5. Catch it if you can.

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