I still gotta watch the Conjuring. But Peeped Spiral...discussed it as the closing segment in this podcast with my brother and friend Boom (we've done a horror segment the past couple episodes, this one starts at 43 minutes in).
The Fans Perspective - Episode 66 - Money over Maverick on Stitcher
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The Fans Perspective: Episode 66 - Money over Maverick on Apple Podcasts
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Episode 66 - Money over Maverick
That's with limited time to get into it though. My main thoughts:
- Chris Rock was hit or miss in his performance. What killed me was how often he threw in jokes and quips. Even when it's a serious scene, dude is dropping jokes and punchlines.
- The traps are the best part, there are some really creative and brutal kills in here. Saw traps kinda became like Final Destination deaths after the first film...you watch to see the crazy ways people get taken out and everything else kinda just gets you from one trap to the next.
- But one thing missing from these traps is the spirit of redemption. That was the most interesting aspect of the first couple movies and they've still failed to get back to that. Jigsaw as a psycho that fancies himself a redeemer for his would-be victims is always gonna be more interesting than Jigsaw the punisher to me.
- This iteration went for a deeper plot, but I felt like it gave too much away. It wasn't as clever as it had hoped to be and I thought they kinda gave away the twists for most of the second half of the movie. The red herrings and misdirects just didn't land for me...but it's still a step up imo from most of the prior plots.
- In that same light, characters have backstories and history which is nice. The world is developed enough to feel organic, though it is almost cartoonishly dark and corrupted. It's not necessarily a bad thing, especially with a punishment focused approach...but it would be nice if I felt invested in more characters surviving this whole mess rather than rooted for a bunch of them to get Jigsaw'ed.
Anyway...not bad, but not great. I'd take it over every Saw after 1 and 2 but it's not touching those two in my book. That's a bit disappointing with the caliber of cast for the movie, but I do think it leaves us with a nice spin on the concept. I like the concept of Jigsaw copycats attaching their own ideals and beliefs to his legend, but I'd just expand that ish and take it to the max. Let's get more than one Jigsaw-minded character and have their ideals clash somehow. They're turning these mastermind characters into unstoppable geniuses and at this point...the only way I expect one to slip up and lose will be facing a similar super genius. Not the highly flawed targets that get hand-selected before they even have a chance.
left an indelible mark on a 90s Kid
