Month: October 2023

Movie Review – “Sawx”

John Kramer and the Saw Squad take their show on the road to Mexico in “Sawx: Jigsaw Goes Bananas.”

Sawx is the latest movie in the very long franchise of Saw movies. There are a lot of movies in this never-ending tale of a man who is dying of cancer. All 18 of these movies (except for Sprial: Chris Rocks the Saw) take place in the last few months/days/years/whatever of Jon “Jigsaw” Kramer as he tries to help people by putting them in deadly traps and saying “Hey, if you die that’s all your fault, I’m just tryin’ to maim you.”

Jigsaw and the young Lady Jigsaw take a trip to Mexico

In Sawx, John Kramer and the Saw Squad take a trip to Mexico to go on an adventure. This is the Herbie Goes Bananas part of the franchise – they even get a little kid that helps them too. John is there to get a new cancer treatment from a shady group of doctors. They are going to give him “some surgery and a cutting-edge cocktail of drugs.” They say that a lot too – “a cutting-edge cocktail of drugs.” They have to hide out in the desert because Big Pharma is after them. They have guns and things to fight against the soldiers of Big Pharma. Yes, the Pfizer Footsoliders and Elite Legions of Eli Lily are a real thing, but we don’t really get to see them in this movie.

But like the American medical industry, these people don’t do anything but steal a lot of money from John. John doesn’t like that so he assembles his crew, calling up Detective Jigsaw from Saws 4-6, and Lady Jigsaw, Amanda from all the movies. Lady Jigsaw and John capture all the people from this fake medical group and they, well, they do the Saw thing.

Doin the Saw thing

Nobody needed this movie. It is all the same as the other Saw movies. “Let’s play a game” and then lots of blood. The universe of the Saw movies is a long and complicated web with the most confusing timeframe – not as confusing as the Legend of Zelda timeline but pretty close. Sawx just fits snugly in between some of those movies, not totally sure where though. It doesn’t talk about things that happen in the other movies, so this doesn’t do anything for the vast web of Saw movies connecting to each other. Sawx just exists and it’s there. John and the Saw Squad are there but they don’t even say things like “Hey, you remember the time you chained those guys up in a basement?” or anything like that.

The 100-year old cancer man: Jigsaw (aka John Kramer)

Tobin Bell is very very old. In his 80s, and he’s been doing Saw movies all of his life. In this movie, I truly believe that this old man is dying of cancer. He is so old, so feeble. What will they do when this fragile old man dies for real? Will they keep doin’ the Saw thing with another old actor? Will frail, elderly Ellen Burstyn take over?

Sawx is a movie but a totally pointless one. I give it 12 out of 42 stars – mostly because the gory stuff looks neat. Kontributor OUT!

Review – “The Exorcist Believer”

Hello, it is me Kontributor with a review for a new movie called The Exorcist Believer. It is a sequel to the 1973 movie The Exorcist and it is the only sequel there is. That movie came out 50 years ago and since it was so long ago people began to believe that it didn’t actually exist. So the Blumhouse people decided to remind people that we should still believe in that movie by making a whole thing about The Exorcist Believer. I took my family to see this movie and, yes, we now believe that The Exorcist existed.

Will this child believe in The Exorcist? Keep reading to find out.

The movie has Aaron Burr being a single father raising his 13-year-old daughter, Angela. I know it’s been a struggle for Aaron Burr ever since he shot Alexander Hamilton dead in 1804 – but he’s come a long way and is acting in movies now. In this movie, his daughter Angela runs off with her BFF Katherine to summon ghosts in an open grave and they accidentally become possessed by demons. Aaron Burr has to team up with this other family, like 3 different priests, his fat neighbor, and an old church lady to do this all-out, no holds barred, tag-team cage match, multicultural exorcism.

Aaron Burr and this old lady believe in The Exorcist

I have a young daughter, Alpha Dora, and this movie did make me rethink how I am raising her. I’ve been so stupidly letting my daughter run around in cemeteries with her friends where they take off their shoes, do battle with crypt snakes, and talk to the dead. Now that I am a believer in the 1973 film The Exorcist, I know not to let my daughter do that every day of the week. Just on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The last thing I would want is for my precious Alpha Dora to accidentally get a demon in her.

As Aaron Burr is trying to figure out why his daughter is all rotten looking and cussing at nice doctors, old Ellen bursts in and starts ranting about how her daughter, Ronald Reagan, was accidentally possessed by a demon. Only the power of believing in The Exorcist saved her daughter. We all know that Ronald Reagan died of Old Timer’s disease in 2004, but for the sake of the movie we have to believe this incredibly aged woman’s tale that Ronald Reagan was attacked by demons and survived.

“I could not attend the exorcism of my daughter, Ronald Reagan, because of the patriarchy.”

In the original The Exorcist, we had Jason Miller as the young hip & happenin’ Damian Karras and the incredibly aged Max Von Sydow as Father Merrin, a priest so old that he actually learned exorcisms from Jesus himself. In that movie, these two priests threw on their proton packs, gave each other a high-five, and blasted that demon right outta some little girl. But in The Exorcist Believer we got two girls that are posessed and those old priests are long dead. So Aaron Burr goes out there and, like in Ocean’s 11 makes a whole team of people do this exorcism.

Who is on this exorcist hit squad? We got the parents of Katherine shouting abut Jesus. We have “ethnic Christian” there to do some kind of Haitian stuff. There is Ann Down as “Old Church Lady” to shout scripture and lecture these young kids about their misbehaviors. Old Ellen bursts in for a bit. Aaron Burr has his fat neighbor around, I don’t know what the hell that guy was doing. There is a Catholic priest, Father Maddox, who isn’t there right away at first because his boss said he wasn’t going to pay overtime for this exorcism happening outside of the church’s business hours. He does show up later in the movie in an amazing scene as he kicks in the door, dual-wielding rosaries and shouting “Our Father hail Mary compels you!” to kick some demon butt with his powerful priest-fu.

Just a couple of fans believing in The Exorcist

Overall I think it is a good and entertaining movie. Me and Alpha Dora had a good time. My son won’t sleep for awhile because I told him this is based on a true story of kids who don’t listen to their parents. I recommend this movie to people who can afford to see a movie that they would like to see. I give it 521 out of 605 stars. Kontributor out.