Saw V Review

When the producers of Saw III needed to replicate the jigsaw killer's bathroom from the first film, they knew exactly where to turn: Scary Movie 4, which had already built a near-identical set for their movie spoof. It's entirely fitting. The Saw franchise is now virtually indistinguishable from the Scary Movie series. Except the former has better jokes.

If you've wound up here, this far down the trail, you're almost certainly familiar with the sprawling backstory, as interlaced as any prime-time soap, so let's cut very brutally and without anaesthetic to the chase. Number five picks up immediately where the previous sequel left off, with detectives Perez (Karkanis), Peter Strahm (Patterson) and Mark Hoffman (Mandylor) leaving the house of pain in various states of disrepair.

Perez is close to death; Strahm's on a stretcher, having given himself an emergency tracheotomy with a ballpoint pen tube to survive one of those fiendish traps; and a remarkably intact Hoffman practically skips out of the Gideon warehouse with the rescued girl.

Given their wildly different outcomes - no. Hold up. Backtrack. Mandylor? Costas Mandylor? For any users unfamiliar with the surreal British TV news spoof 'The Day Today', that's a name that could have been plucked right out of the line-up. "An American election update now, with... Costas Mandylor." Brilliant name, though. If ever you're in the pitstops of depression, say the name 'Costas Mandylor' out loud a few times. Feels better already, doesn't it? Intoning the name 'Mandy Patinkin' aloud works just as well, if not even fractionally better.