If any of you read my review for Saw IV, you know I was less than thrilled with it. In point of fact, I hated it. In preparation for this movie, I watched it again last night, and I still hate it (though this time I was in my living room and thus able to doze off every time it got boring, which was basically the whole running time). This movie was long on gore but short on thrills or anything that would entice me to ever see it again, I hated all of the characters, I thought the plot only advanced because one of the lead characters had the magical ability to be in several places at once, it jumped around in time so often my head nearly exploded, and the story wasn't just complicated – it had so many plot twists and turns and events that I lost track about a fourth of the way through the movie and didn't give enough of a shit to catch myself up. Add to that the fact that the fifth installment was getting pretty shitty reviews, and I was pretty reluctant to see the latest Saw effort. But spurred on by some positive comments from people whose opinion I trust way more than most, I decided to put my concerns aside and watch Saw V tonight anyway.

Am I ever glad I did. This movie kicked my ass from here to next Tuesday and I enjoyed the ride. We start off with a gruesome and loud as hell scene that set the tone for what was to come next and move into a plot that manages to be complicated without falling apart under ten gazillion ridiculously overwrought twists like the last installment. As usual, people are put into situations that test their will to survive. Meanwhile, cops investigate while failing to actually discover anything of import until the final reel, and we get more pieces of the puzzle (hee hee hee) that shed new light on the events in past installments. We learn more about what happened near the time Jigsaw's work first started, we again meet his ex wife and though she has a brief role, we get the sense that she will play an important part in what happens next. Tobin Bell is creepy as ever as the indomitable Jigsaw, and we learn more about what makes him tick (and his work continues even after his death, just as L. Ron Hubbard continues to publish book after book after HIS death...creepy, huh?)

The lead FBI Agent on the case here, while he appears dumber than a box of lead rocks, actually shines in his role and makes us believe his plight (even as we wonder how he graduated grade school, let alone the academy, because it would seem that natural selection should have taken him out years ago, as he fails to learn his lesson over and over and over again). I noticed a disturbing trend with the Saw movies when I watched them yesterday. With each installment, the gore quotient seemed to go up higher and higher, while my enjoyment level seemed to decrease. Part IV had those amazing buckets of blood but it made me want to drive a wooden stake through my head, and when a friend asked me last night why the movies kept getting gorier and gorier but stupider and stupider, I told her that "more is more" and when filmmakers run out of ideas, they have to rely on other things to keep our attention. Please don't misunderstand me, I love some gore, and the gore is the only thing that makes the last Saw watchable for me, but I want my movies to have something else. I had heard that Saw V was going to be the goriest of all the installments, but although there is a good amount of the red stuff on display, I think it actually has less gore and more story content than its predecessor. Now this could be an illusion; I could be seeing less gore because this movie had a cool plot AND a lot of gore, instead of being like the last movie, with only the gore to keep me from going insane, but I do appreciate that I saw much more focus here on story and character development, leading me to give a shit about what was happening to these people.

I still maintain that the recent plot twists of the last two movies require that one of the characters have the ability to be in several places at once, and the screwed up timeline irks me a little. The acting from our good buddy Detective Hoffman hasn't improved any from the last movie, but at least he has fewer lines to say in this one. He still annoys me though. And his lips are bigger than Angelina Jolie's. Dude, step away from the botox. Finally, it amuses me how apparently one of the lead characters is psychic, since he lays hands on police files and is magically able to flash back into the past and see what happened behind the scenes of Jigsaw's murders. Nothing like good old psychic ability to enhance your police work every now and then (not that it helps him be any less of an idiot as the movie progresses...how about using some of that ability to avoid the stupid ass mistakes you make over and over and over again?

Thousands upon millions of times better than the previous installment, this movie has single handedly renewed my faith in the series. In spite of its flaws, it was so damn cool I enjoyed every minute. Forget part 4 ever existed if you must, but don't miss this movie.