Liked it beyond expectations.

Rating: 9/10 (1 August 2008)

I liked "Saw II" as an horror-flick but not really necessarily as a Saw movie. "Saw III" is really more like it again and is featuring a great and original story, despite using some old concept and ingredients of the previous movie entries.
This movie perhaps even connects better to the first movie than "Saw II" did. Also story-wise. This movie somewhat gives a new spin to the first movie "Saw", since it also goes back to the events of the first movie, without spoiling too much. It makes "Saw III" a better sequel than "Saw II" was.
But besides being a sequel to the first movie, the movie of course also still is a sequel to "Saw II", featuring some of the characters- and concentrating on some of the events of the second sequel in the Saw movie franchise. Nevertheless games are being played with some new characters again. It's also basically one of the reasons why so many Saw got and still can get made. New characters can constantly get introduced into the franchise and the concept alone is more than enough to provide a never ending supply of Saw movies. Part five and six all already in production and it seems like one new Saw movies get released every year.
To be perfectly frank, I thought that the story of this movie got brilliantly written. Of course everything comes together again at the end, in a great way. Calling "Saw III" predictable, just because it's the third movie in the franchise and uses the same concept is just not fair. The story is in no way predictable and its filled with some unexpected twists. It's a very well thought out script that again of course also futures some complicated life and death puzzles which the characters have to solve in a certain amount of time in order to survive.
It's also a movie more about emotions and some classical themes, rather than just simply being a well written gory horror flick, like perhaps the two first movies were. The movie focuses more on the Jigsaw character than ever before as well. The story cuts back and forth between the Jigsaw plot line and that of the character of Jeff, who is in the middle of playing Jigsaw's latest cruel game.
It's made in the same style as the other Saw movies, meaning that it's fast and has a typical unpleasant dark atmosphere. It's from the same director of "Saw II" and he also directed the fourth sequel in the series. It's also as gory- and features just as ingenious well thought out and shocking deathtraps as was the case with the previous movies. Although it also needs to be said that the Jigsaw's surgery sequence is perhaps more gory than anything else in the movie really.
I liked the movie better than I ever could had expected.
9/10
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