No Comparison To The First Two

Rating: 7/10 (5 November 2006)

What a way to ostensibly finish off your franchise. This franchise has been the group of the most ideal horror films, at least for me. Once I got through Saw, it shot straight up to the top of my list of best horror movies. Despite what snobs may say about it, it has everything the perfect horror movie should have. It has a scary, claustrophobic atmosphere, characters that aren't stupid teens going camping, eery abstract music, constantly different killings, and never a happy enough moment. It really had an effect on me, an effect that really shuddered me, because I'm not used to being truly scared by a horror movie the way I'm supposed to be. Only a handful of other horror films have scared me substantially. Saw II, though it didn't scare me as much, still maintained a creepy if not claustrophobic atmosphere and effected me with gore the way very few other films have. Saw II has a great understanding of the sensitivity of body parts like eyes and veins and knows how to get the audience's goat by exploiting them. Saw III is lackluster in both the scariness of the original and the gore disturbance of the second one.
Saw III was said to be gorier than the first two films put together, and what it really is is lacking in the amount of gore of either of them individually. Yes, it has some gritty scenes and plenty of blood and body parts, but it's far from consistent and never is it as terribly creative or shocking like it is with its predecessors. Its atmosphere is not very creepy, either. The way the first film was claustrophobic in that it put us directly in the characters' bone- chilling situation, this film is claustrophobic in that it's missing something by not expanding further. We keep feeling like there's supposed to be more to the story, more to the action, more to the violence and the horror, but there isn't.
This third installment in an otherwise brilliantly frightening series of movies insults the audience's intelligence in the execution of its twists, it ends too quickly to be affecting, and its plot itself seems forced. A part of the story that I like involves its main victim, a grieving man whose son was killed who is pitted in games wherein he has to battle himself and control his vengeful thoughts. I also like seeing behind the scenes of the first film, the showcasing of the first film's backstory, even if knowing everything now that we didn't know when watching it---even if it's a severance for the most chilling parts of its story---detracts from the fright. It may not be as scary anymore with the footnotes Saw III provides.