Starring Matt Passmore, Callum Keith Rennie, Clé Bennett, Tobin Bell

Directed by The Spierig Brothers

Lionsgate, out now

Just when you thought it was safe to back to the cinema at Halloween, an eighth instalment of the Saw horror franchise is unleashed. As gruesome corpses start appearing across the city, all eyes are on the Jigsaw Killer, but how can that be if he’s long dead?

Every Halloween from 2004 to 2010, a new Saw movie was released, inevitably (and quite quickly) succumbing to the law of diminishing returns. Becoming increasingly gory in an attempt to be more extreme in the torture porn department than the previous one, inevitably the box office dropped and with the gimmick of 3D, 2010’s Final Chapter looked like it was the end of the road – there’s only so many inventive ways to dispatch your victims with mantraps and circular saws.

When another Saw movie was announced (initially called Saw: Legacy) thoughts turned to whether it would be a soft reboot or a true sequel, or indeed whether it would have something new to say. One of the excuses for the poorer quality entries in the series was the speed in which they were made, so surely a seven-year break allowed plenty of time for a new spin (ho ho ho) on the Saw? Well, not really.

Good news first – it’s no worse than most of the previous movies, probably sitting somewhere around the middle. There’s gore, but no more gratuitous than before, and there’s even an attempt at a twisty-turny plot. Don’t try and work it out – it’s ridiculous and contrived – just roll with it and accept that most of what’s being presented as empirical evidence is likely to be a red herring.

As always, you sit there marvelling at the ingenuity of the contraptions, Heath Robinson inventions with blades, while scoffing at the probability of how they were constructed and can work to such precision. Acting-wise, Callum Keith Rennie is good value as the detective, and there’s much fun to be had from autopsy assistant Hannah Emily Anderson as a flame-haired Scully-alike.

Verdict: Nothing new here, but when you’re making the eighth instalment in a franchise you’ve got a pretty good idea of what people are after. I guess this makes it the Halloween Resurrection or Jason Takes Manhattan of two other popular horror series… and it’s better than either of those. 7/10

Nick Joy