Jigsaw

Jigsaw was released in 2017 and directed by Michael Spierig. Rather than simply retelling the plot, the film is worth revisiting for the characters, conflicts and ideas that give its story its identity.

Mortality and lifespan, Freedom and Mortality emerge through what the characters face and the choices they make, giving the story more to explore beyond its immediate plot.

Jigsaw, Logan Nelson and Detective Halloran do not begin the film seeing one another clearly, and watching those first impressions break down is a big part of why Jigsaw still works.

Detectives Brad Halloran and Keith Hunt pursue Edgar Munsen, who claims he must start a "game" to survive.

He activates a remote trigger and is then shot and collapses. That detail matters because it shapes the way the characters initially see one another.

Five people – Mitch, Anna, Ryan, Carly, and an unconscious man – awaken inside a barn with buckets on their heads and chains around their necks. From there, the film can focus less on explaining the setup and more on what happens between the people inside.

A tape recording from John Kramer explains that they must each sacrifice blood to survive before the chains pull them towards a wall of buzzsaws.

Most of the group escapes by cutting themselves, except for the unconscious man, who awakens too late.

Their next test reveals that Carly, a purse snatcher, accidentally caused the death of an asthmatic woman.

To save the others from being hanged, she must inject herself with one of three needles – one an antidote to a poison in her system, another being saline, and the last one acid.

Tobin Bell plays Jigsaw. Eleanor reveals to Logan that she is a Jigsaw fangirl, but now fears this might incriminate her.

That pressure reveals more about Jigsaw than the surface-level role alone would suggest.

Logan convinces Hunt to let them go after saying that the bullet which hit Edgar was fired by Halloran, whom he and Eleanor suspect to be the new Jigsaw Killer.

Meanwhile, Hunt finds jigsaw-shaped pieces of flesh in Halloran's freezer.

Jigsaw has more on its mind than the basic setup suggests. Mortality and lifespan sit close to the centre of the film, but it is explored through the characters rather than treated like a lesson.

Freedom matters just as much. The film keeps challenging the assumptions its characters make about one another, which is where much of its emotional weight comes from.

It also explores mortality and parents protecting their children. Those ideas overlap rather than sitting in separate boxes, which helps the movie feel like a story about people rather than a checklist of themes.

Jigsaw could hardly be separated from the decade that produced it. Released in 2017, it carries the attitudes, style and filmmaking rhythms of the 1990s without needing to announce them.

It also sits comfortably within the era's splatter and crime filmmaking, even if the movie itself is more interesting than any single genre label suggests.

Watching Jigsaw now means seeing both what has lasted and what unmistakably belongs to 2017.

What still works best is the human material. Ideas around mortality and lifespan, freedom and mortality, haven't stopped being relevant simply because the clothes, language, and cultural references belong to another era.

Some moments inevitably land differently for a modern audience. Revisiting an older film properly means enjoying what still works without pretending every choice has aged equally well.

Much of that staying power comes from the characters. Jigsaw, Logan Nelson, and Detective Halloran remain useful shorthand for the personalities and pressures the film explores.

Jigsaw has lasted because people continue to recognise something in it. Nostalgia helps, but nostalgia alone does not keep a movie in the conversation for decades.