Horror

Beard Blog Movie Review: Jigsaw (2017)

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A new game begins.

A 10 year later sequel to the original Saw movies, Jigsaw reignites the series. A new game is being played, but who is running the show? Jigsaw (John Kramer) has been dead for 10 years, or has he?

jigsaw-movie
Billy the puppet

[perfectpullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Jigsaw stays true to its roots and delivers the twists and turns we have come to love from this genre.[/perfectpullquote]

 

 

 

 

My favorite horror movie series Saw is back and I feel better about it than I did the last time a sequel was made. There were some points during the movie where I saw bad acting and plot holes, but the whole thing is saved by the end. Jigsaw is a throwback to the first set of movies and feels very familiar, in a good way. The story is told in two places, one takes place in ‘the game’, and the other is basically an episode of The Glades, complete with Matt Passmore.

Overall it’s a great restart to the series and I wouldn’t mind seeing this go forward, a little.

I didn’t see this movie in XD or IMAX, but I don’t think it would be worth the extra price.

Who should watch this movie? Fans of the original Saw movies, people who enjoy a good psycho-thriller movie, and someone looking expand their horror horizons beyond the supernatural hogwash being churned out every year.

Who shouldn’t watch this movie? People who can’t take a lot of blood and/or gore, viewers who didn’t like the original Saw movies, and horror fans looking for ‘jump out and scare you’ action.

 

Score

7.5 / 10 – Jigsaw stays true to its roots and delivers the twists and turns we have come to love from this genre.

 

See more of my movie reviews here

 

 

Spoilers

No spoilers this time since it will really ruin the movie.

Go see it for yourself!

Movie Review: It (2017)

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You’ll Float Too

Coming into this movie, I didn’t know a lot about the Steven King novel, the 1990 TV miniseries, or this new version, which I feel made the viewing experience much better. I knew there was a clown, I’ve seen the red balloon imagery before, and I knew it was in the horror genre. Beyond that, I was just going on the hype and sales of this movie.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”#ff0000″ class=”” size=”28″]Skarsgård has what it takes to be nightmare fuel.[/perfectpullquote]

About a month ago, I signed up my wife and I for MoviePass, a service that allows you to see unlimited movies every month for a flat fee. This will be great for the fall season and hopefully into the future. Because of this, I will be trying to review every movie I see, so stay tuned!   MoviePass is not giving me anything to write this, nor is anyone paying me anything.

It opens in the late 1980s with two brothers building a paper sailboat. The older brother Billy is clearly the babysitter in the family, and the younger brother clearly needs babysat. The younger brother, Georgie, has fears of the basement and when he’s forced to go down there nothing happens. This was a slow start for me, but then it immediately got better. See spoilers at the end for more.

The star of the show by far is Bill Skarsgård who played Pennywise (the clown). It was almost on par with Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight. You could see the legitimate terror in the face of the actors when they had scenes together. Skarsgård has what it takes to be nightmare fuel.

pennywise
Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise

Throughout this movie I was distracted by trying to figure out the mechanics of how the villain worked and how he could be defeated. The writers very early on spoiled the fact that they were going to be making a sequel, and by the end of the movie, it was painfully obvious.

Overall this movie was very entertaining and kept me interested the whole 2 hours and 15 minutes. If the same production team is involved in the sequel, it should do very well too.

Who should watch this movie? If you like Stranger Things, It Follows, and 80s horror movies, you will definitely like It.

Who shouldn’t watch this movie? Fans of modern/terrible horror movies like Paranormal Activity. It has more of a story and character development and less jumpy scary stuff. Also, if you have a problem with clowns, teenagers swearing, or blood/guts, you should stay home.

Score

8 / 10 – Great movie to better enhance the currently cliche genre

*Spoilers*

Do not read below if you do not want to read any SPOILERS!

The entire movie we are constantly reminded that in 27 years, blah blah blah, the clown/It comes back. The movie takes place in 1989 which is 27 years from 2018. I wonder when the next movie will come out and take place… The opening scene where Georgie meets and later gets killed by Pennywise was my favorite. This scene created the baseline of fear for the clown and also showed that this movie was going to have no mercy, even on the youngest kids. Hopefully in the future they do a better job of explaining the history of this ‘It’. We got a couple of stories that the Ben character researched, which made me hope for a deeper history lesson, but alas that may come later. Since I’m not a It originator, that may have already been explained in the book or miniseries.