Yet another failed second sequel.

Rating: 3/10 (10 March 2008)

It's extremely difficult to make a good "Part 3" in any franchise, and Saw is a perfect example. The descent in quality from parts 1 and 2 to this one is so precipitous that it makes me think of the fact that, in trilogies or otherwise, good second sequels are extremely hard to come by. Back to the Future and Alien 3 are the only two that I can think of at the moment, and there's a Saw 4.
It starts with the investigation of a man who had chains attached to numerous parts of his body, and he had to rip them off in order to get out of a room before a bomb exploded. One of the detectives says that that was "all he had to do." He gets mocked for this by another detective, since the man had to rip chains out of both of his Achilles tendons. Makes it a little hard to walk out of anywhere.
At any rate, before long we sit through a pointless series of scenes showing the kidnappings of various victims, ripe for the fast-forward button. By this point in any series or franchise or whatever, the formula will be getting pretty old and tired unless something new is added. There's nothing new here. It's the same old crap about this guy John Kramer somehow having the time to devise unbelievably complex torture devices and little puzzles for the victims to try to solve in order to escape.
The biggest problem is that by now it is getting so ridiculous to see this guy devise schemes to literally rip people to pieces while at the same time trying to criticize people for neglecting children and wives. What??? Sorry John, but the brutal tortures and murders are having the little unexpected side effect of damaging your credibility just a tiny bit.
In this installment, John has kidnapped a doctor and is forcing her to keep him alive. I love her introduction, by the way. She performs one of those movie operations where she does something miraculous, saves a young child's life, and everyone around her gets mad at her for it. I love that. Talk about not being appreciated. And on top of that, her marriage is falling apart. Soon she finds herself kidnapped and wearing a collar that's basically half a dozen guns pointed at her throat. Maybe my own luck isn't so bad after all. And the brilliant talent of Angus Macfadyen is totally wasted as Jeff, Dr. Denlon's (Bahar Soomekh) husband and another of Jigsaw's victims.
Here's the whole movie -
"Hello so and so, I want to play a game. The device you are wearing is attached to your whatever, in order to escape you'll have to pass a series of tests. Let the game begin. Blah blah blah blah blah"
If this is getting old for you, don't feel like you're missing anything if you stop watching these movies now. By this point, the Saw films are only for hardcore Saw and horror fans, the latter of which I used to consider myself but with each movie like this that comes along, the further away from the genre I feel. Remember Hostel? If that's where horror movies are going, to that level of vacuous thought and logic, I'm done, I can tell you that right now. Saw 3 is a hundred times better, but still a bad movie.
One of the major revelations that this sequel adds to the series is that we see an interesting setup to the original film, as well as behind the scenes of how and why some of the devices are created and Amanda's relationship to Kramer, the killer. Their relationship is ridiculous in the extreme, they just don't make a lick of sense as human beings. Not even a drug addict would get as emotionally attached to such a pasty, brutal man as this guy. Her tears before his surgery are outdone in bizarre ridiculousness only by her reaction of disgust during his surgery. Ripping that woman's rib cage apart didn't seem to bother her so much. Maybe it was the licensed physician that was worrying her.
Speaking of which, there is nothing dumber than people who blame doctors for their illnesses. Dr. Denlon was one of the diagnosing doctors of Kramer's "inoperable tumor," so he decides to kidnap her and punish her for, I don't know, not being able to operate. Maybe if she was Superdoctor and could do an operation that no one else in the world could do he wouldn't be so upset.
Then again, Jeff, in anguish over his son's death by a drunk driver, allows a witness who fled out of shock and fear to freeze to death before his eyes for doing something that a good percentage of normal people would have done. She was terrified! And then he considers allowing the judge who sentenced the killer too lightly (what state gives 6 months to drunk drivers that kill kids??) to drown in rotten pig guts. Following that kind of logic, I wouldn't have been surprised if he had wanted to punish God for the irony of letting a drunk driver kill his son in the middle of a sunny day.
The end of the film has an unexpected level of complexity, some of which works, but also includes an unintentionally hilarious shotgun blast and a device called "the rack" which is truly sickening and disturbing, and not in the good horror movie kind of way.
The end of the series is WELL past due, yet I'm sad to see that there is a part 5 being made. I hope they can manage to get a shot of someone kicking a dead horse into the movie somewhere