The pieces still fit, but the puzzle isn't much fun

Rating: 6/10 (28 June 2009)

Horror fans are sort of trained to accept sequels that are largely unnecessary rehashes of elements that worked well when they were fresh. However, after Saw II proved to be such a promising follow-up, one couldn't help but hope that the third installment would prove equally solid. What we're offered here isn't necessarily terrible, but the third film in the still-burgeoning Saw saga shows the franchise laboring a bit.
While the "games" in the first two films were certainly absurdly complicated enough to force a suspension of disbelief, the sprawling devices found in Saw III are complex to the point of ridiculousness. We're inclined to accept that Jigsaw is a master of such deadly tools, but knowing here that his "apprentice" is the one doing the handiwork, its a bit harder to reconcile these extravagant finished products with Shawnee Smith's novice hands.
Smith revises her character from the first two Saw films, and, in fact, this outing picks up almost the moment the last one left off. This bodes well off the bat, since the excellent Part II gave us plenty of likable characters we'd be willing to root for through more Saw installments. Unfortunately, they mostly appear in Saw III to be killed off one by one for no apparent reason. A teeth-gritting opening with returner Donnie Wahlberg goes unfulfilled when we find out later in the film what actually happened to him in the moments after we first see him. Likewise, seeing other characters that gave Jigsaw an adversarial foil in Saw II being excised from the proceedings simply to fill out the bloated running time with senseless (but admittedly grotesque) splatter set-pieces squanders some potentially strong future story lines.
The ending of Saw II was dodgy enough, but there was promise that this sequel could develop the puzzling scenario given to us at the end of the previous film. After this whole convoluted maze plays out, we're pretty much left with the conclusion that everything we've seen in Saw II and III was all for nil. The way things are wrapped up, it almost seems like the film-makers intended to make number three the finish of the series, as the ultimate finale here ties a bow on the trilogy. Of course we know now, with Saw VI slated to hit theaters in October 2009 and more sequels likely to follow for as long as the franchise stays profitable, this film isn't even the halfway point of this opus. Given how strapped for crisp ideas the film-makers are here, it may be a long and dreadful ride until we get to the end of this line.
The gore on display here is truly sickening and zealous, so stomachs will likely be tested while taking all of this in. However, the scraps thrown to splatter aficionados here are too overblown to have much impact. Sure, there's tons of blood, and plenty of intestines and acid-washed flesh throughout, but it all seems like overkill, as if the film-makers knew they had a rickety offering here and followed the mantra of "more blood" to try and make this sequel live up to its namesake. The intricacy of the traps and gadgets used to inflict the carnage here is simply too dense to have any real-life grounding. While the first two films were brutal but ultimately semi-realistic, Saw III drifts well into the realms of fantasy. Even if you can accept the mechanical improbabilities of these instruments of death, after one scene where a doctor performs cranial surgery on Jigsaw with a power-drill, an "oh, come on, now!" response is the only course of action.
Ditto with the "twist" ending, which is actually like five twist endings in one, none of which have any lasting impact, and at least two of them are pretty stupid when you get right down to it. By the time this Cyclopean web of plot turns unfolds, we've already been invested for two hours, so it's rather frustrating to be anticipating some sort of conclusion, but find only muddy questions that we don't really care about having answers to instead. Two hours is too long for a sequel this derivative, and there's a lot that could have been trimmed here. Blood-feasts shouldn't be laborious.
By the end of this film, we have jettisoned almost all of the characters the franchise was starting to become built on, which means the series producers have a fairly clean slate for Saw IV. Despite the obvious weaknesses, there's plenty here to merit the interest of fans of the first two, and the veins haven't run so dry that the series can get back on track with some fresh blood for the next outing, so I'm not ready to give up on Saw just yet.
Any franchise has its weaker chapters, and time will tell whether or not this was a rare misstep, or the start of Saw's downward spiral into direct-to-DVD redundancy. Either way, Saw III has plenty of blood and guts, but no heart.