RECENT WATCHES: Saw 3D (2010)

"Saw VI" grossed only 69.8 million at the global box office. Still a healthy profit against its 11 million dollar budget but a considerable drop from prior films, part six remaining the lowest grossing non-pandemic era entry in the series. A few factors could be considered for why that is. Maybe part five kind of sucking had less people turning out for six. Maybe the yearly release schedule left the creative team burned out and audiences' appetite for gore finally satisfied. The sixth film was topped opening weekend by "Paranormal Activity 2," suggesting that a new horror franchise had stolen Jigsaw's title as the box office champ of Halloween. Whatever the reason, Twisted Pictures decided they better wrap it up while some sort of demand still existed. The release of "Avatar" the year before had officially kicked off the modern 3D fad, giving the franchise some other coat tails to ride. "Saw 3D" would launch traps and giblets at theater goers in 2010, the additional promise of being the concluding installment in the story giving it another gimmick to draw ticket buyers in. (Which was taken further when the film was released on flat DVDs under the hilariously presumptuous name of "Saw: The Final Chapter.") The tactic paid off, in terms of earnings, but few seemed to find this a satisfying end to the series. Like far too many horror hits, "Saw" seemed to be going out on a whimper and not a bang.

Jill, the widow of the late John Kramer, strapped unworthy apprentice Mark Hoffman into the reverse bear trap at the end of the last movie. The would-be Jigsaw survives and Jill turns herself in to the FBI, in hopes they can protect her. Now with nothing to lose, Hoffman goes on a roaring rampage of revenge, with Jill as his final target. He also takes aim at internal affairs agent Matt Gibson, an old colleague tasked with protecting Jill. Meanwhile, the games continue as Bobby Degan – who has falsely claimed to be a Jigsaw survivor to gain fame – is thrust into an actual series of traps, forced to try and rescue those that assisted his hoax from deadly contraptions.

Lionsgate had originally planned to split the so-called final "Saw" installment into two parts – another unfortunate cinematic fad of the time – before the mediocre box office for part six made them reduce it to one movie. This strikes me as odd, considering Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan's original master plan was supposedly a second trilogy spanning through the fourth, fifth, and sixth movies. Indeed, "Saw 3D" makes it clearer that this story could have easily wrapped up with Hoffman getting his head wrenched apart by the reverse bear trap. The only plot thread that truly remains to be resolved is Hoffman seeking revenge on Jill. This results in him stabbing his way through a police station, in a decidedly un-Jigsaw fashion. Once that plot anticlimactically wraps up, the film abruptly ends with the entrance of another character that barely misses qualifying as a deus ex machina. The sequel hastily introduces Agent Gibson to give Hoffman someone else to scheme against. I honestly wondered if this guy might have been an established personality from the previous films, given the "Saw's" series habit of expanding on minor characters from past movies. Nope, this is Agent Gibson's first and last appearance in the "Saw" universe, another guy Hoffman has a years long grudge against despite him never being mentioned before now. That subplot is also resolved bluntly and without much fanfare. 

All of "Saw 3D" reeks of this feeling, of simply wanting to be done with it. The formula – of a chosen asshole being forced to decide the fate of captured victims, running parallel to the Jigsaw soap opera– is maintained. However, the disconnect between Hoffman's storyline and Bobby Degan's trial comes across as massive. You never get the impression that Hoffman is particularly interested in this game nor does it have much effect on the rest of the plot. Truthfully, the scenario pushes "Saw" into preposterous territory. Some of the traps are so elaborate and big – such as a CGI brazen bull building itself around a woman – that you wonder how any one person could afford to build and assemble it by themselves. Much less a serial killer who is on the run from the law through the entire movie. If a "Saw" movie leaves you asking the question "Wait, when did he have the time and resources to set all that up?," something has gone seriously wrong.

The film is repeatedly pulled between this general lack of ideas and energy and a desire to be the biggest, craziest "Saw" yet. The results come across as more desperate to be intense and shocking than actually upsetting. An opening trap – of a woman descending towards her boyfriends fighting over a table saw – takes place in a public square, once again making you wonder how that was pulled off in-universe. Meanwhile, the sequence ends up feeling uncomfortably sexist. A group of Neo-Nazis suspended in and around a speeding car is similarly mean-spirited in its ferocity while seeming so elaborate as to strain believability. These complex gags of death stand in contrast to the actual "game" once it gets going, which consists mostly of people in contraptions that impale them on spikes. In other words, it sure felt like the "Saw" team had run out of good ideas for death machines that are creativity gruesome and feature the trademark ironic punishment element of Jigsaw's schemes. Which has been all but abandoned by this point, as you're never quite sure what point exactly the engineer is trying to prove here.

As the last dying gasp of "torture porn" as a popular subgenre, "Saw 3D" represents the supposed goal of the style being all but abandoned. The highly realistic gore effects, in service of pushing the horror genre to extreme new heights, have given way to more rubbery looking violence. This is exacerbated by the sequel being in 3D. Obviously, that leads to bladed devices being jabbed towards the viewer and bloody meat spurting through the air. Both such scenarios play out in a nightmare sequence, a totally gratuitous moment included simply to shove another murder scene into the film. Such a theatrical presentation inevitably bends towards camp. However, "Saw" would be remised if it didn't maintain its trademark mood of taking its own ridiculous bullshit with utmost seriousness. This creates a mean-spirited atmosphere, most evident in when we finally see the reverse bear trap work as intended. Shattered teeth and bloody threads of flesh are tossed at the viewer, a desperate attempt to shock or impress that comes off as feeling more than a little sweaty. 

A better movie would embrace this undercurrent of humor. Honestly, I almost wonder if "Saw 3D" was trying to do that. The idea of a support group for survivors of Jigsaw's deadly games, that there are enough of them now to support such a venture, feels like an especially dark "Saturday Night Live" sketch. The scenes devoted to this set-up almost move towards comedy, as the past victims debate whether Jigsaw was a monster or a genius who saved their lives. The answer to that question seems self-evident but "Saw 3D" seems to have unironically embraced the idea of John Kramer as some sort of well-intentioned cult leader. So totally bereft of ideas, Dunstan and Melton incorporated an extremely popular fan theory of the time into "Saw 3D," that a character unseen since part one is not only still alive but willingly became another of Jigsaw's apprentices. I like Tobin Bell too but playing Kramer as this irresistibly magnetic, quasi-cult leader who brainwashes people into following his inconsistent philosophy – which the sequel presents as better than Hoffman's revenge driven methods – is baffling. John Kramer sure did a lot of revenge too! It's a twist that makes no sense, moving towards an ending that is nothing but an act of shallow fan service. 

That is ultimately all "Saw 3D" has to offer. Having exhausted all other ideas, the sequel represents the series spiraling towards a hashed together resolution of its own melodramas and a couple of attempts to goose the audience with familiar faces or bloody special effects. I definitely recall at least a few "Saw"-heads loving that final twist at the time. Unless you are thoroughly invested in the series' mythology, you're unlikely to get much out of the film. Greutert and his team trot out the same old visual quirks and musical cues but any effect they once had has long since worn out. "Saw VI" showed that incorporating some social satire and more chances for Bell to ham it up could've kept this series rolling for a while. Instead, "Saw 3D" has the horror franchise chasing its own tail on the way to a thoroughly underwhelming ending. After seven years, it was time to wrap the game up. [4/10]