Saw III
dir: Darren Lynn Bousman
This is what happens when you don't have decent medical insurance
Saw III, which is currently dominating the US box office, might actually be an okay movie. It might even be better a better movie than Saw II, which goes against the Law of Sequels that states as more sequels get made, the quality declines exponentially.
Even if that is the case, it still does not make this a good horror movie.
If horror movies are meant to scare audiences, to instil fear in them, by that standard Saw III is a failure. Because as uncomfortable as it is to watch people being torn apart or tormented by complicated machines, and as disgusting as some of the scenes in this movie are, they are not actually scary. We are not afraid about what is going to happen to most of the people who are introduced into the story only to die a few minutes later. Because they’re not characters, on the most part, they’re just props whose usefulness is soon to end.
In that sense, identifying with any of the characters in these flicks is virtually impossible, which means their ultimate fates are only of mild interest to the audience.
Saw III also goes to extraordinary lengths to tie up loose ends from the earlier movies, even to the extent that a major plot hole identified by many audience members after enduring the first instalment is not only referenced but dealt with.
Too bad they couldn’t go back and undo the damage done by all that acting in the first Saw as well. Still, it was a fairly unsettling movie that tried to put a new spin on the survival horror genre, and on the most part, it succeeded. Even with the ridiculous twist at the end.
Saw II tried to do all that and more under the guise of combining a horror plot with the kind of reality television setup that pits a group of strangers against each other to see who survives. It too had a terrible twist, bur generally succeeded more as a thriller (with mostly disposable and annoying characters whose purpose is just to die in gruesome ways), and was in some ways a better film than the original. Though still crap.
Saw III abandons the ‘reality tv’ element (thankfully), but goes in a few new directions: medical horror, vengeance and jealousy. It sounds absurd, and it is, but that doesn’t make the film less entertaining, which is strange.
Though he doesn’t agree to the name himself, John, or the Jigsaw Killer (Tobin Bell), the main villain in the franchise, strikes again. Except this time he’s too sick to be able to put his evil plans into action himself. This is why he needs an apprentice.
Amanda (Shawnee Smith), one of his previous victims, is now his accomplice in crime. Their games are, at least in John’s eyes, a way of motivating people to improve their lives. John, who suffers from an inoperable brain tumour, doesn’t like it when people don’t seem to be living their lives to the fullest, or appreciating life as much as they could. So his solution is to put these unworthy people into horrible and invariably fatal traps where they always have the chance to survive, if they’re motivated enough.
Of course they all usually die, but John doesn’t consider himself a killer. If the people end up dying in all these horrible ways, it’s because their drive to survive isn’t strong enough.
So a few random people die right in the beginning, just to show us that the movie means business, before the real battle begins.
With Amanda doing all the leg work, John is bedridden, and needs medical attention. So what better solution could there be than kidnapping a doctor and forcing her to perform brain surgery with a necklace of shotgun cartridges strapped to her neck?
Lynn (Bahar Soomekh) is that doctor, and she gets to perform horrendous surgical procedures on John under very trying circumstances because her own life dangles from the thread of John’s continued survival. All the while Amanda looks on, with that murderous glint in her eye.
At the same time, Jeff (Angus Macfadyen) stumbles around one of the elaborate rat mazes engineered by John and Amanda, trying to survive. Jeff has been selected as one of the unworthy because of his grief over losing his son in an accident. Unable to deal with his grief, he is put into situation after situation where his choices see-saw between survival, being merciful or getting revenge on those who played a part in his son's death.
To say this part of the film is ridiculous does a disservice to the word ridiculous. For us to believe that any of the things Jeff says or does makes any kind of sense then we have to believe that Jeff is dumber than the average lab rat in a maze. One so dumb it doesn't realise it's in a maze. Jeff seems not to be able to grasp this, but I guess if he did, the entire plot would fall apart like a drunk person's argument.
That being said, the film works, for some odd reasons. Mostly, it’s the dynamic between John, Amanda and Lynn that really carries this film. The Jigsaw Killer, as played by Bell, has always been one of the franchise’s main assets, because his understated performances, in a genre where actors usually beg for the opportunity to overact, make the nonsensical plots and stupid coincidences look less so.
It almost surprises me to say this, but the strange relationship between Amanda and John is actually interesting. The dynamic they share, teacher to student, cult leader to worshipper, father to daughter and even on the sexual level, makes for a more interesting story than just someone running around setting off lethal traps.
The only other real innovation in terms of the movie is the inventive way the makers contrive to kill characters off, like one of the Final Destination movies, which are also not scary in any way but billed as horror films. The manner in which a particular person is meant to die by being drowned in rotting liquefied pigs is horrible and demented, and at least shows some imagination. It's still not scary. My last performance review at work was scarier than this flick.
The flick intersperses multiple scenes relating to the earlier Saw movies constantly, in a simple (for those who’ve watched the earlier flicks) but obtrusive manner, which is meant to distract the audience from the fact that the makers are killing time in between killing characters. It’s mostly needless filler, although one flashback provided (for me) probably the nastiest scene, where a character from the second film finds a different way to escape from the chain around his leg. And the explanation of the 'cheat' in Saw had me laughing like a lunatic.
All in all, the movie is really for fans of the series, who, judging by the box office so far, aren’t going to be disappointed. Or sick puppies, whichever are easier to please.
But probably not horror fans.
6 times it takes characters of unmitigated stupidity for plots like these to be able to work out of 10.
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“I forgive you.” – Saw III
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