[Intro Music]
Welcome to the Kill Count, where we tally up the victims in all our favorite horror movies.
I’m James A. Janisse, and today we’re looking at ‘Saw 5,’ released in 2008.
‘Saw 5’ is the directorial debut of David Hackl, who served as the production designer of the previous three Saw films,
so, you know, nice little promotion for that dude.
With all your faves like Eric Matthews and Daniel Rigg dead, ‘Saw 5’ leaves us with Detective Mark Hoffman,
the undercover Jigsaw apprentice now trying to tidy up all the loose ends left over so he can live free and saw hard.
How many kills will Hoffman rack up in his first solo flight as our killer? Let's find out and get to them.
[Music]
The movie begins on a dark and stormy night, where this tatted up dude Seth Baxter
wakes up chained to a workbench.
Billy appears on a TV and is all puppet pissed about the amount of time Seth served for killing someone.
[Billy] “You served five years of what should have been a life sentence for murder."
Then he puppet-splains Seth’s present situation.
There's a big blade above him that's about to be slowly lowered down.
In 30 seconds it'll start cutting into him, and in 60 it'll finish the job.
The only way Seth can stop the blade is to hold his hands inside the vises beside him
until they get crushed to a bloody pulp.
The blade starts swinging and it is instantly one of the scariest traps we've ever seen.
Just the sound of this thing would make me poop my pants.
Seth's underwear may or may not be soiled, but he is scared enough to follow the rules
and put both his hands into those vices, crushing them like red pepper.
After that excruciating experience is over the vices let go, but the blade keeps on a-comin’!
As the blade cuts into Seth, he looks over to see the eye of someone watching him from behind a screen.
His last words are of quiet indignation:
[Seth weakly] “I did what I was supposed to do…”
The pendulum blade lowers all the way to kill him and the clamps around his neck release
to allow a final, dramatic death gasp.
That was a solid meal of gore for our opening kill of the movie, better cleanse our palates with a TITLE CARD!
Since the Saw series is now a full-fledged TV show at this point,
‘Saw 5’ starts with what's essentially a ‘Previously on Saw,’
showing Strahm getting locked inside that makeshift operating room by an unseen Detective Hoffman.
He finds another way out, but in no time at all he's getting ambushed by a Pig Head
and knocked out with delicious drugs. Mmm…
He wakes up in a crazy-cool shot that's kind of like the one from the beginning of ‘Resident Evil.’
And it turns out he's had his head placed inside a glass box-- the better to see his tears through!
Attached to the box is a couple of jugs of water.
But Strahm’s not at the water cooler to chat about the latest ‘Game of Thrones,’
he's there to fucking drown, because those jugs start filling that box.
He winds up looking like a Haunted Mansion ghost before he gets a genius and totally badass idea:
He takes a pen from his pocket and gives himself a tracheotomy,
stabbing a passage to his airway and allowing himself to breathe through this neck hole.
Nice work Strahm, you just proved yourself worthy of being this movie's main character!
The cavalry arrives at Gideon Meat Packing,
and we finally get closure to solve 3's cliffhanger ending about Jeff and Lynn’s daughter Corbette
when we see Hoffmann carrying her outside to safety.
Hoffman tells another detective that nobody else made it, but don't speak too soon there, Mark!
[EMT] “We got a live one!”
Yeah, you do! And Strahm’s survival straight up stole Hoffman's spotlight!
Hoffman's face dissolves into a Jigsaw magazine cover and a not-so-subtle transition
into a scene with John Kramer's ex-wife, Jill Tuck.
She's meeting with a lawyer who tells her that John bequeathed her a tape. In it, he tells Jill that
[Randy Meeks impression] there are certain rules to the fifth film of a horror franchise!
Oh shit, sorry, wrong series.
He actually tells her he's left her a box with stuff that's super important inside,
and that she'll know what to do with them.
When presented with the box, Jill takes a random key from around her neck and opens it.
But get this shit! We don't see what's inside, and we literally won't until the next movie!
Listen, Saw! I love the soap opera shit, but you can't just give half a hint of something
and not revisit it until the sequel.
That's not how movies work!
The nondescript police force of the Saw series is celebrating that their super villain is finally dead.
Hoffman gets a nice, juicy promotion and the fallen officers of all these movies
get their Sears portraits put on display.
So everything worked out in the end!
Until Hoffman finds an envelope on his desk with a note inside alluding to his secret identity as Jigsaw Jr.
This note shit is gonna get a little confusing later,
but just remember that Hoffman found this note right now in the present,
after he got his promotion and Jigsaw’s death and everything.
Assuming the note came from Strahm, Hoffman immediately sets out to take revenge,
going to the evidence room and stealing Strahm's cellphone.
Then he's called to Agent Perez's old hospital room that the cleaning ladies must have missed on the last shift.
Strahm is pissed about Perez being gone and, in his new raspy voice,
he pointedly asks Hoffman how he walked out of that building alive.
Hoffman responds like a fourth-grader:
-"How did you?" -[Strahm hoarsely] "On a gurney with a fucking hole in my throat!"
Oh ho! He's got you there, Hoffy!
After Hoffman leaves, a new character, Special Agent Erickson of the FBI, shows up to talk to Strahm.
He's easy to identify because he's got a Bluetooth in his ear, so thanks for that, writers!
He's there to tell Strahm that he's off the case then leaves him alone in the hospital room,
looking like a sad, divorced dad in his frumpy hospital bathrobe.
Y’know, this is all fine and great, but we needs us a trap plot!
And Hoffman begins it by unveiling a real neat shoebox diorama and a rack of monitors showing a series of rooms.
I'm glad Jigsaw and his apprentices never advanced
beyond a third-grade science fair presentation style of their traps.
The trap plot begins with five people waking up to find their necks ensnared
by a cable that runs back towards a very head-choppy-style blade.
What's great is that, by this point in the series, even these randos knows who's behind their predicament.
[Malick] "Jigsaw."
This lady Brit points out that, wait a minute! Jigsaw’s dead!
But before they can make sense of anything, Billy appears on a TV to welcome them all to his playground.
He tells them they've got shit for morals and are selfish as fuck. But today?
[Billy] "This singular way of thinking will be put to the test."
“Today, five will become one with a common goal of survival.”
Presently they're all connected to each other with those cables around their necks,
and they're gonna get a little too much off the top if they don't free themselves with the keys across the room.
But the cable connecting all of them only has enough slack for one person to reach a key box at a time,
and they've only got 60 seconds for all of them to get free starting from whenever one of them goes for a key.
"Your lifelong instincts will tell you to do one thing, but I implore you to do the opposite."
There's also a fifteen-minute timer connected to some nail bombs
that'll go off and kill them if they're not out of the room by then.
You know, just for extra motivation.
What's great about this trap plot is that, rather than start fucking up immediately,
these people all play it cool and try to figure out the riddle of why they're there
and what connects them to each other-- you know, besides the death cable around their necks.
But eventually drug addict Mallick gets properly instigated by mysterious Charles and his cool-ass voice--
[Charles] “It's a GAME, tweaker!”
Mallick makes a selfish run for a key and he sets off the timer.
Charles uses his strength to stop Mallick and then retrieve his key first.
Then he steps back to give the cables some slack so these ladies Luba and Brit
can take individual turns getting their own keys.
But Mallick and this Ashley chick can't seem to work together,
and although Mallick is able to retrieve his key and join the others in safety,
the timer runs out on Ashley and she's pulled back into the razor, giving her a cartoony decapitation.
The effects on the corpse after the fact are just fine,
but that kill’s got to have the worst effects we've seen in the series so far.
The door opens and they move on, but not before Brit collects all the keys in the room.
-[Mallick] "What are you doing?" -[Brit] "Being smart."
Cop plot time, where Strahm is sneaking into work to collect some unapproved overtime.
He looks up Hoffman's records and finds out that Seth Baxter,
the dude killed by the pendulum blade in the beginning, had actually murdered his wife, (Actually Girlfriend, Sorry)
who it turns out was Hoffman's sister, as this unevenly exposed funeral picture reveals.
Crazy stuff!
And let's just click through some more plot stuff here for good measure!
Mm-hmm! Great. Yeah, get a close-up on that plot stuff, sure.
On his way out Strahm is stopped by Erickson, but he plays it off by saying he's just collecting his things
before taking time off for, y’know, throat stuff.
Strahm goes back to the scene of Seth Baxter's murder and inspects everything there,
including the torture glory hole—gory hole?
A flashback shows it was Hoffman's eye behind it in the opening kill,
and that he cut out a fleshy jigsaw piece in an imitation of the real deal.
As the detective on the case, Hoffman admitted that he knew the victim as the man who murdered his sister,
but I guess that didn't raise any red flags at the time.
In the present, Strahm just kind of intuits this all on his own.
"You killed him. Made it look like a Jigsaw trap. I got you."
In the next room, the trap plot folks suss out their stories.
That headless chick Ashley was a fire inspector, Luba is a corrupt city planner,
Brit is a VP of a real estate company, and Mallick is a trust fund drug addict.
Charles already knew all of this because he's an investigative journalist.
Billy howdy-doos his way into the story to tell them that the four safety chambers they see
will protect them from this room's bomb when it goes off.
But there are only three keys hidden in the glass jars hanging above their heads.
They've only got a minute so Charles incapacitates Mallick, citing survival of the fittest,
then starts breaking these jars open like he's a gold-star piñata-busting champion.
But after he takes a key from Mallick's hand, he becomes the piñata himself.
[Luba Gibbs] "Survival of the fittest, my ass!" [pipe clatters]
Brit, Luba, and Mallick are able to get to safety inside the chambers right as the timer reaches zero
and Charles gets killed in the ensuing explosion.
Consider it luck, Chuck. You probably had the quickest death in this entire franchise!
And yet it's still got some nice gore to it!
Back to a cop plot flashback.
After Hoffman investigated Seth Baxter's case, he found an envelope in his desk
with a note just like the one we saw him find earlier in the movie.
But remember: This is a flashback, meaning that this note came first chronologically,
and while Hoffman suspects that Strahm wrote the other note we saw him receive,
this one must have been written by John Kramer, who's waiting for Hoffman
in an elevator at his apartment building.
We're witnessing the first time these two met, and as with many first-time Jigsaw meetups,
it involves a needle in the neck and getting knocked the fuck out.
Hoffman wakes up in Jigsaw's starter workshop that we saw in the last movie,
and John says he knows all about Hoffman and his sister's murder .
Since we see it in a flashback, I'll put it on the Count.
And yes, I should have done the same with Jeff and Lynn’s son Dylan in ‘Saw 3.’
My bad for not including it.
Although John sympathizes with Hoffman's familial loss and his desire for justice,
he can't condone what Hoffman did to Seth.
[John] “Unlike you, I’ve never killed anyone […] KILLING IS DISTASTEFUL!”
It never ends with this guy!
But he really, truly believes his ideology, which is what makes Jigsaw so damn interesting.
[John] “There is a better, more efficient way.”
Seems like he's willing to recruit Hoffman into his effort to crack down on recidivism,
but only after he psychologically tortures him by making him pull the trigger of a shotgun pointed at his head.
[Hoffman panting with relief] "Fuck you! Fuck you."
He’s all like, [Jigsaw impression] ‘See? The shit I do will instantly rehabilitate anyone!’
And then he introduces himself to Hoffman as the man they call ‘Jigsaw.’
Uh…yeah John, Hoffman was probably able to detect that one out by now.
Hoffman's given a choice: arrest John and have the beans spilled on his Seth Baxter murder,
or become a student of Jigsaw.
[John] “Or I could kill you right now.”
“But you’re not a true killer.”
But-- you just said-- whatever, John.
You know what happens in the end: Jigsaw gets Darth Hoffman as an apprentice.
In the present, Hoffman calls up Bluetooth Erickson and casts some shade on Strahm,
hinting in all sorts of ways that he could be the Jigsaw accomplice they've been looking for.
Erickson grows more receptive to the propaganda when he finds the Jigsaw files missing from the office,
and figures out Strahm must have stolen them.
Meanwhile, Strahm is just taking a waltz down Saw memory lane,
checking out this still unclean scene of the first movie’s razor wire Saw trap,
which was the trap that gave us our first ever on-screen Saw victim.
We see a flashback in which the victim, Paul, gets attacked by a pair of Pig Heads.
During a fight with biker Pig Head, Paul gets stabbed with a needle by red robe Pig Head,
who's John Kramer rockin’ a BOMB-ass bald head and a slick goatee!
No wonder Hoffman's on board!
This flashback is one of those where we watch old stuff played out more in depth, but it's done in a cool style.
And like I said before, seeing the fuller picture of the storyline always feels kind of neat.
Also, turns out that Hoffman had warned Jigsaw of Detective Tapp closing in on him,
so Jigsaw planted Dr. Gordon's penlight on the scene and had Hoffman lead Tapp to Gordon as a suspect.
Further flashbacks show Hoffman helping John set up the nerve gas house party
and complaining about Amanda's outsized role in that affair.
Because remember, now we know that Hoffman was Jigsaw’s apprentice before Amanda Young came on the scene.
The remaining trap plot trio gets into their next room, where there's a scrub-a-dub tub in the middle.
Bath time Billy shows up to tell them that, in order to open the five locks on the door to the next room,
the five circuits powering them must be closed by connecting the five cords to the bath water.
[Billy] “Who will bridge the gap? The choice is yours.”
The three-minute timer starts and Luba takes over the piñata-whacking role by knocking Mallick into the tub
so she can attach the cables to him and get the hell out of there.
But Brit has a different plan and kills Luba with a single stab to the neck.
I was kind of surprised by how easily Luba died here, but I guess they needed her dead fast
so Brit and Mallick could easily prep her corpse for tubby time.
They put her in the water and attach each of the five electrical cables to her body.
The final attachment is an undercutting head stab, and with that the door to the next room opens
and the trap plot twosome escapes another round of nail bombs.
Bluetooth Erickson gets a visit from Jill Tuck, last seen with her bequeathment box,
and she tells him that she thinks Agent Strahm is following her, raising his suspicions even further.
But right now all Strahm's doing is continuing to visit old Saw sets and trigger more flashbacks.
During the ‘Saw 3’ era, after Hoffman complained that Jigsaw was giving Amanda too many chances,
John was like, [Jigsaw impression] ‘Shut up and do my work, Henchman-- er, Hoffman!'
and gave him a file folder with pictures of the Fatal Five, meaning John was behind this movie's trap plot
(no big surprise).
Then apparently Hoffman disappeared through that hidden wall door mere seconds
before Lynn and Amanda rolled in to kick off the meat of ‘Saw 3.’
Strahm has a revelation:
[Strahm hoarsely] "We were all supposed to die."
And he’s right! Hoffman had a plan that was supposed to kill off all these contingency characters
and leave him the sole survivor and the hero of Generic City.
And, why, that just makes Strahm all sorts of displeased!
He’d be even more pissed if he witnessed this fuckery going on,
with Hoffman calling Erickson from Strahm's cellphone and not talking when Erickson answers. RUDE!
When Erickson goes to call him back, Hoffman powers down Strahm’s cell, to make him look extra shady.
The simple plan works and Erickson orders a locator on Strahm’s phone.
Hoffman returns to trap plot central and plants Strahm’s cellphone at the console,
so when the locator finally, y’know, locates it, it's that torture headquarters that Erickson rushes off to.
The trap plot folk are in a room with a contraption that don't need no Billy tutorial.
There's a beaker and some buzz saws, and they'll have to fill the beaker with blood to open the next door.
At first they assume they'll have to fight to the death to see who lives,
but then they realize they could have all survived these traps by working together.
Yeah, no shit, ya idiots!
But just in case you the viewer wants to know how they were supposed to pass each room specifically, here you go:
Brit sees that the keys from the first room were all the same,
meaning after one person retrieved their key, they all could have used the same key to free themselves.
The bathroom trap would have worked with all of them getting a survivable shock
instead of one person frying like Luba did.
And in that second room those safety chambers could have fit more than one person.
Which I thought was pretty damn obvious, but I guess the whole thing with these characters
is that their instincts are selfish, so it makes sense they missed it.
They're not good people.
Billy pops up to confirm everything they've already figured out, and while prepping for the joint blood sacrifice,
Mallick reveals that he's probably there because he accidentally killed eight people
when he burned down a building in exchange for some heroin.
He didn't know that those people were in the building when he burned it down, but apparently Britt did.
Turns out she set that plan in motion by paying a drug dealer to hire Mallick for the arson,
since she needed the land for real estate stuff.
The others (fire inspector Ashley, reporter Charles, and city planner Luba) had all helped cover it up somehow,
keeping everyone out of jail.
[Malick]-"You're a monster!" [Brit]-"So are you."
[Malick] "We both deserve to be here."
Aw! Torture traps: Bringing people together since…
Well, actually, this is kind of the first time they've been successful in that regard, isn't it?
Hoffman arrives at what looks to be his home and Strahm is right there behind him.
Strahm just walks right through the door to stalk Hoffmann through the house and…
Hey, uh... Is it just me, or does this place look kind of familiar?
Like... that trap door on the ground, and uh... those tunnels…
Yup! Turns out this is the nerve gas house!
And apparently Hoffman remodeled it to be a home?
It's kind of far-fetched, I know, but look!
While Strahm's looking around the infamous tunnels, he even sees the door to the shit room.
He doesn't opt to enter it, instead pressing on to find a room with that glass coffin
we saw John making in a flashback in ‘Saw 4.’
Inside is a tape player, and when Strahm plays it he hears Hoffman's voice instead of John Kramer's.
[Tape] "Hello, Agent Strahm."
It tells him good job on the detective work but, uh, lay the fuck off now, man.
It also says the only way safely out of this room is inside that box full of glass shards.
But Hoffman himself is lurking just outside that room and when he makes a noise,
Strahm stops the tape to hear what's up.
Meanwhile, Mallick and Brit stand side by side as they prepare to sacrifice any future hand grip strength.
In the goriest scene of the movie, their hands are buzz-sawed apart to fill the beaker with blood.
It's a pretty intense scene, but at least they have each other to lean on as they make their sacrifice.
When the beaker has its fill, the door unlocks, so it looks like Brit and Mallick have made it!
Yeah! I love a real happy, feel-good ending!
Later, Erickson arrives at the building having followed the phone tracker,
and when he walks into the torture trap command center he finds Brit barely alive on the ground.
She woozily tells him that they won, and he calls for immediate medical assistance.
So yeah! She and Mallick actually succeeded and survived!
While waiting for the medics to arrive, Erickson takes a look around
and finds Hoffman's planted evidence setting up Strahm,
including a cell phone on the table and the file Strahm took from the station.
Erickson also finds a folder with some headshots of Matt Walsh in it--
Oh! Shit, no. Those are pictures of Erickson.
So now he thinks that Strahm was targeting HIM next.
He calls in an APB on Strahm, meaning Hoffman's gambit has succeeded.
Speaking of Hoffman: He enters the room with the glass coffin only to find it empty,
meaning Strahm didn't follow the instructions on his tape.
Instead Strom attacks Hoffman from behind, and after a short bought,
knocks him into the glass coffin and closes the lid, locking him inside.
[Strahm panting] "I got you! You motherfucker!"
Ah, but did you, Strahm?
‘Cuz the door slams shut behind him, locking him in this room,
and Hoffman, though trapped in the glass coffin, is looking pretty smug.
The reason is revealed when Strahm listens to the rest of his tape:
[Hoffman on the tape] “However, if you choose not to, you will never be heard from again.”
“Your body will never be found. You will simply vanish.”
As the glass coffin begins to descend, the tape explains that Strahm should have stopped pressing forward.
But since he didn't, now everyone's gonna think he was the Jigsaw apprentice,
leaving Hoffman the hero as originally planned.
The glass coffin becomes a safe little lockbox when it finishes sinking into the ground,
and Strahm is left in a room that must be going on a crash diet, 'cuz it is getting small FAST!
The walls close in on him until he's nothing more than a red-tinted rainstorm
falling against the glass lid of Hoffman’s safety chamber.
And that's the way the movie ends, with the defeat of Special Agent Strahm.
Hoffman's first big trap left two people living, but how many people did ‘Saw 5’ leave dead?
Let's find out get to the Numbers-- by flying! Ha ha ha ha, byeee!
[Music]
In a series low, tied with the first movie, only six people died in ‘Saw 5.’
The victims consisted of three men and three women, giving us an even 50/50 split,
and with a run-time of 95 minutes, we got a kill on average every 15.83 minutes.
I'll give the Golden Chainsaw for coolest kill to Agent Strahm,
who really could have used a pair of droids to shut down all the garbage smashers on the detention level.
Dull Machete for lamest kill will go to Ashley, because I hate how fake her decapitation looks.
For shame, ‘Saw 5’!
The Platinum Punji Sticks for coolest trap will go to the necktie trap, also known as the collars.
I love the tension (pun intended) of each person having to give and take so they can all escape,
and the reveal that one key would have freed them all is an excellent way to illustrate
how selfish these people's instincts were.
Rusty Mousetrap for lamest trap will go to the shotgun chair that Jigsaw put Hoffman in.
What, his test was to be willing to pull the trigger on himself?
Also, I don't know guns, but I've read that with the way that cartridge is shown to have been loaded afterward,
Hoffman should have actually had his head blown off.
I'm giving every untitled Saw sequel a personalized subtitle to help it stand out.
This week I give you ‘Saw 5: The Hoff Man Cometh'.
And that's it! ‘Saw 5’ came out in 2008, and although it opened in 2nd place thanks to ‘High School Musical 3’,
it did make enough money to justify ‘Saw 6’, which I'll be covering next Friday (YouTube willing!)
Until then, I'm James A. Janisse. This has been the Kill Count!
Thanks a lot for watching this week's Kill Count!
I want to thank a couple of patrons, like Macy O'Banion and Marissa Sanchez.
I really appreciate all of you being understanding about all the stuff I'm facing with the Saw Kill Counts.
Sometimes I, like, over-tweet about it,
but it's just because this is my job and my life and I'm so passionate about it.
Feel free to keep me in check and be like, ‘All right, dude. We got it.’
Despite all the hard work, I've been having a blast making this series.
Alright y'all, be good people.