(Long Island, N.Y.) Whew…thank goodness, it’s finally over. Well, at least, that’s what they’re claiming: that Saw 3D is indeed the last installment of the Saw series. But we all know Hollywood…they’re a dishonest lot who swoon to the tune of the almighty dollar, and if Saw 3D makes a ton of dough, you can bet we’ll still be tortured by this horrible series for years to come. After all, there have been eight Friday the 13th films since 1984’s “The Final Chapter.” Of course, I actually LIKE that series, so I’ll forgive them in this case for hoodwinking me so.
You know, I’ve always felt the Saw series had huge potential that it never lived up to. The basic premise is interesting: a crazed madman known as the Jigsaw Killer kidnaps people who he thinks are “wasting their lives” (it was probably easy for him to find victims when
maybe 90% of the population does this) and places them in elaborate traps to mutilate them and test their will to live. If they survive, it’s supposed to give them a “greater appreciation for their life.” Hmm…you know, when I spell it out like that, the
premise
isn’t THAT great. It sounds kind of stupid, actually.
But, as seen in the first film of the series, it WAS a unique idea and created a fairly dense atmosphere of gloom and dread…at least when director James Wan didn’t foul up the proceedings with idiotic things like rapidly spinning and rotating cameras, super-fast rapid-fire edits, and a script that had more holes and stupid reveals than…well, something that has a lot of holes and stupid reveals that I can’t think of right now. Saw needed to be handled with subtlety to be
truly effective, but…this is a series that knows nothing of subtlety. And alas, the series has only gotten more heavy-handed, incomprehensible, and just plain bad with each installment.
So, now we find ourselves at entry number seven, titled Saw 3D (ooh, it’s in 3D now, is anyone surprised?). Apparently the series was meant to go on, but after the box office dropped for part six I guess the studio finally decided to pull the plug. So, Saw 3D is meant to tie up all the loose ends and provide closure, and believe me, this is a series that needs it. But guess what? Saw 3D leaves as many new questions unanswered as it provides answers to old ones.
So, the original Jigsaw Killer died in Saw 3, but one of his apprentices, Mark Hoffman (Costas Mandylor), is still running around causing trouble. Saw 3D picks up right where the last film left off, which left me wondering what the heck was going on. You see, I had actually seen the previous Saw movie, but it was so bad I must have somehow forcibly expunged if from my memory as some sort of defensive mechanism. That must be it, since I’ve seen plenty of sub-par movies that I remember perfectly.
Anyway, Hoffman wants to kill Jill Tuck (Betsy Russell), the widow of the original Jigsaw Killer (Tobin Bell, who shows up in flashbacks), for some reason that escapes me. And Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes), a character from the very first Saw film whose fate was left unknown, is shown six sequels later to have actually survived, and he’s got some weird cloak-and-dagger things going on in this movie. Oh, yeah, there’s this
other plot where a self-help guru named Bobby Dagen (Sean
Patrick Flanery
) is getting rich and famous by lying about having escaped Jigsaw’s clutches. Hoffman doesn’t like that, so he kidnaps Dagen and those close to him to make him actually live the lie.
Of course, this exposes the main flaw in Jigsaw’s plan…he thinks he’s helping people, but he wastes all this time and money constructing all these silly Rube Goldberg-style traps, and for what? So one guy, IF he lives through them, might go back to school or start writing a novel or something? And what about all the innocent people he kills along the way? It’s just so stupid.
In the end, director Kevin Greutert, who’s only directing gigs have been Saw movies (he served as editor on the earlier installments, “graduating” to director for Saw 6), has constructed an ode to gore that is truly impressive (I still can’t believe what they can get away with nowadays in an R-rated movie compared to the 80’s). But as a film, it’s total garbage. As per the norm for the series, plot twists come flying that are neither set up before, nor do they make any sense whatsoever (a certain character is revealed to have been in cahoots with the original Jigsaw Killer all along, but it makes no sense whatsoever that this person would do such a thing), the atmosphere is marred by the non-stop attempts to be visually cutting edge, and the ending, which was supposed to effectively end the series, instead leaves lingering doubts, nothing resolved, and a hole for an eventual sequel so large that you can drive a truck through it. And that’s all if the plot even made sense, which it really doesn’t…it’s like they made it up as they went along.
Oh, and the highly-touted 3D effects? They barely even make their presence known. Useless.
So, if you can’t get enough of people being eviscerated and cut in two while characters and situations fly by with nary an explanation, then Saw 3D is for you…and you are a person that officially scares me. What started out with the potential of becoming a brutal yet intelligent and (dare I say) elegant horror series (similar to Silence of the Lambs) has degraded into the trailer trash of scary movies. And unlike the chronicles of a certain hockey mask-wearing screen villain, I can only hope this really IS the “Final Chapter” for the Jigsaw Killer.
