The SAW franchise ended a couple of years ago but you could be forgiven for thinking it lives on with this sadism-fest from the writers of the final four entries in the Lionsgate splatter series. The survivor of the divertingly nasty THE COLLECTOR (Josh Stewart) turns up in a box at a club ominously accessible via the password “Nevermore”, triggering an outrageously elaborate opening splatter set piece that might be one of the finest gore sequences in an American horror movie this century. Tracking The Collector’s latest kidnap victim, Stewart ends up at his vastly rigged and booby-trapped hideaway, where the other cast members are only ever about two minutes away from multiple impalement. Frenetically paced and unrelentingly mean-spirited, this works hard to top its great opening stretch and, despite a total lack of character development and humour, delivers such an enthusiastic array of exploding heads and inventive mutilations (even a dog is decapitated!) that you never feel short changed.

Review by Steven West