Don't be blinded by the gore

Rating: 9/10 (27 October 2016)

While the Saw series is often (incorrectly, I feel) blamed for the goring-up of horror films and credited with starting the torture porn genre, something you'll notice if you watch the first two installments in the series is that they're fairly restrained and not as exploitive as some might expect. Saw III, on the other hand, is where the films stopped restraining themselves with the violence and adopted a policy of "keep showing! Show everything! More blood!!" This is not bad in and of itself, but I do feel like people more critical of the film are distracted by that and can't see that this film has much more story and character than the give it credit for. In this film, a doctor played by Bahar Soomekh is told she has to keep a dying Jigsaw alive while a man, played by Angus Macfadyen, goes from room to room confronting people he believes responsible for his son's death and has to choose to either let the people in the traps die, or to forgive them and set them free. The film's biggest strength is in its characters. You really feel for and understand Macfadyen's character and the tragedy of his situation and it's really hard to watch him go through his tests and face his own personal demons. Equally compelling is the Amanda-Jigsaw relationship, which is very unique for a horror film like this and the scenes they have together are the type you don't expect from a saw film, with Jigsaw reassuring Amanda that he believes in her worthiness to carry on his work in a very father-daughter like manner, with some very subtle characterization. In summary, the film has good characters, a some compelling and interesting drama and character dynamics, even going to far to explore the small difference between what Jigsaw does and what a straight-up murderer does, and the twists are just as compelling as you would expect from these movies at this point. I really wish they hadn't felt the need to be as gory with it as they did, since I think more people would be more open to the film. As is, the film is in my top 3 of the series, along with Part 6 and Part 1.