It's seven years since the last Saw movie was released (Saw: The Final Chapter) and, in the universe of the franchise, a decade since John Kramer (Tobin Bell) died... but his 'games' appear to have begun again.
Once bodies start appearing, bearing the hallmarks of Jigsaw victims, hardboiled detective Halloran (Callum Keith Rennie) and his new partner, Keith Hunt (Clé Bennett) refuse to believe that Kramer has risen from the grave, even though the forensics are pointing them in that direction.
Instead their suspicions fall closer to home when they start to look at pathologists Logan Nelson (Matt Passmore), a widower and single parent suffering PTSD, and Eleanor Bonneville (Hannah Emily Anderson), an adrenalin junkie with a sick obsession with the original Jigsaw murders.
Meanwhile, five people are being put through a series of life-threatening "games" in an isolated farm location, distinct from the usual urban settings of the previous franchise entries.
However, when they fail, their corpses turn up in public places around the city for Halloran and Hunt to find.
Jigsaw definitely leans more towards the original police procedural approach to the mystery of who is committing the crimes.
Yet, while the film throws us a few curveballs, it doesn't really do a good enough job of obfuscating the trap-setter's true identity.
Once you've figured this out early on you spend the rest of film mentally batting away the red herrings that try to drag you in a different direction.
Also, come the final act, one of the protagonists - the closest the film comes to having a hero, you may have thought - simply disappears from the action completely.
Genuinely atmospheric and the first of the franchise since the original to look really cinematic rather than like a blood-spattered TV show, Jigsaw has a more contemporary veneer than the mid-franchise sequels.
Conversely, the traps - while elaborate - have a grittier, and less extravagant, feel to them, probably because of the rustic locale they have been constructed in.
The script, by Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger, is solid, and, as is common with this franchise, messes around with the concept of non-linear narrative, twisting the plotlines into a complex bundle that even fills in more 'blanks' in John Kramer's very industrious backstory.
I'll confess I love the way everything meshes together across all the movies, making them, in essence, one single narrative.
It does appear though that from the moment Kramer learned of his cancer diagnosis, he started building an array of massive "games" around the area, without anyone noticing, and recruiting several loyal acolytes to assist him... none of whom gave even a hint to anyone else they were involved in these massive undertakings.
Which, again, brings me back to the inescapable conclusion that polymath (engineer/architect/philosopher etc) John Kramer - aka Jigsaw - would have made an incredible Batman villain, from the panache he brings to building deathtraps and his ability to attract devoted henchmen to the way his 'games' continue to unfold 10 years after his death.
In fact, by this stage of this non-supernatural horror franchise, you're almost convinced that if anyone could find a convincing way to return from the dead it would John Kramer.
I purchased the eight Saw movies as a 'box set' bargain in the Sky Store, for just £20, and while wading through some of the middle-period - more 'torture porny - sequels I started to wonder what I had let myself in for.
But, by the end of Jigsaw, my interest was definitely piqued by the prospect of seeing Spiral: From The Book of Saw.
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