More gruesome, but less satisfying

Rating: 6/10 (10 November 2006)

Is Jigsaw going to be another one of those maniacs - aka, Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers - who simply cannot be killed? I don't know, but he makes another appearance in Saw III, which - to me - is far more gruesome than the first two but oddly less satisfying. It starts with the opening of the movie and a couple of people caught in Jigsaw traps, sequences which seemed to serve little purpose for the movie except to make the audience squeamish right away. There were also quite a few flashbacks which ended up being a little confusing in relation to the timeline. And the ending was decidedly un-Hollywood, but so gut-churning and made me so uncomfortable (and I'm not talking about the gore, but the ultimate way the events unfolded) I'm not sure I can watch this movie again. All in all, though, it was a solid horror/suspense movie - albeit the lesser of the three Saw movies (No. 2 was probably the best one, though the ending for No. 1 was pretty darn cool). And the door was clearly left open for at least another installment, which won't be such a bad thing ...