Saw III

October 30, 2006

Rated: R Runtime: 107 min Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

This is our third outing with Jigsaw and while the traps have gotten even more creative this time around, the quality of the story has taken a nosedive. Instead of putting a group of people into a situation where they have choices to make if they want to survive, it’s individual cut scenes with people in traps and one guy watching others in a series of traps. Of course, it’s all brought together at the end so that it makes sense but the journey wasn’t nearly as interesting as it should have been.

Saw III As we know Jigsaw is dying and he’s training up someone to take his place. You might be able to guess who, you might not, but it doesn’t really matter. The apprentice doesn’t do things quite the way Jigsaw does which is apparent after the first encounter we see. Jigsaw really did like to “play a game”, and it’s not a game if you don’t have the possibility of winning. These new puzzles? Nope, can’t win. Why is this? Well, we get somebackstory to explain… and we don’t care. Also, Jigsaw used to be a nice guy. How do I know this? More backstory that we don’t care about.

We start off with the cops cutting their way into a room with a blowtorch. Inside are the remains of victim #1, the dude in chains from the trailer. A detective is called to the scene and notices the sealed door and knows this isn’t the work of Jigsaw. Next we jump to a lady with a guy in a room, neither of them are very happy and she’s going into work early (she’s a doctor.) Now we’re watching another guy sitting on a bed having flashbacks of his son getting hit by a car. Back to the hospital, doc sleepwalks through an emergency procedure. Back to the guy, something is amiss in the room so he interrogates his daughter. Doctor is popping some pills and gets locked in the locker room, and she’s not alone. Guy is sitting on the bed when his daughter walks in to get ready for school.

Think the proceeding paragraph was hard to read? You should try watching it. Blech. The entire movie jumps around like this. It’s not impossible to follow by any means, but it’s tiring.

After the previous movies I had high hopes and was very disappointed, hence I’m only giving this 2 stars. The blood and gore was first rate, the traps were creative, but I was so bored in-between the blood splatters that I just wanted it to be over.

Posted by John | Filed Under 2 Stars, Angus MacFadyen, Bahar Soomekh, Dina Meyer, Horror, R, Shawnee Smith, Theatrical, Tobin Bell