? The now-enfeebled
genius of murderous contraptions called Jigsaw returns for a third go-round
that, as hinted at in volume II, finds him taking on a young protégée. Rather
than the large group of players in II, this most prominently features
just two, a doctor and an embittered father whose fates are linked, against
these two twisted minds. If you’ve not seen any of these films, the basic idea
is that Jigsaw never dispatches his victims directly, but rather sets up a
situation such that the only way to survive is by enduring excruciating pain,
such as by having to put one’s hand in acid to obtain a life-saving key.
+ Just in terms of
plotting, this is the best of the three installments. If you accept that there
are people both clever and evil enough to abduct people at will and build
amazingly sophisticated torture machines, it’s sort of believable. This series
is morally questionable in the first place, as it more or less puts the
audience in the position of hoping that Jigsaw’s potential victims face
ever-more-elaborate torture. But that was especially so with the barrage of
idiots in II, where you truly identified with the killer. Here you at
least root for the victims to extricate themselves. The puzzle conceived for
the father actually asks a reasonable question about the nature of justice,
even if the one doing the asking has some questionable views about the use of intense
pain as a path toward a moral education. But, hey, it’s a horror film, and the
very worst comes first.
- This series is
morally questionable in the first place, and deserves an NC-17 regardless of
the many cuts (so to speak) that it took to achieve an R. It’s the thoughts the
movie puts in your head, not the amount of blood, that’s horrific here.
= **3/4 If you saw Saw,
and saw Saw II too, you’ll want to see III.
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