Weakest One So Far

Rating: 5/10 (30 October 2006)

While there are more traps in this movie than the others and the fact that they're more gruesome can only carry the movie so far. This one is missing what the other two had in terms of pacing and it really shows.
While Jigsaw is being operated on, there's someone else trying to make their way through various tests. When we're watching the new person, the film grabs your attention. When that's not happening, the movie loses a lot of steam very quickly because there's not much to watch during the operation. In fact, there's so much pacing that's lost that there are numerous cuts back to the other films to fill in various parts of the story in an attempt to keep it up. I'm guessing they just used extended footage from filming before because they're all built around scenes from the previous two movies. In addition, there are lots of quick cuts. Sometimes that makes it harder to understand what's happening including one scene where a mysterious woman is in the park which is then never explained in any sense. I know the quick cuts are a staple of the Saw franchise but they went overboard here.
This one also isn't really scary. More often than not, it shows things with incredible graphic detail which might make you turn your head away more than they'd make you scream.
Great writing fuses the two parts together beyond the ending you'll probably see coming and does manage to tie everything up so the typical cop-out ending for other modern horror films doesn't apply here which has always been a strong point for the Saw series. Then there are WAY too many quick cuts to sum up everything that has happened in case you weren't paying attention to most of the movie.
In the end I can't recommend it as highly as the other two films.