Glorified Snuff...Very Dangerous Territory

Rating: Null/10 (2 November 2006)

Hollywood has been walking a very fine line recently to try to scare the crap out of us. The problem, some directors feel, is that we are so desensitized to what we have seen in recent horror films that we must up the violence, gore, and grotesque to limits never before seen in cinema.
With the exception of a wonderful scene in the beginning with Donnie Wahlberg, there is no artistic value to anything shown in the movie "Saw III" and I feel like a worse person after seeing it. There is no reason to see it unless you are a sadist, or feel the need to impress yourself for how much you can take.
This movie is an excersise in physical tolerance, not mental. Instead of covering your eyes in fear, you will turn away in disgust. It is nothing but a snuff movie with a budget filmed by people who used to get arrested for charging people to see it.
I have nothing against horror movies or gore or violence or the grotesque. I do, however, when it is done without any artistic reason whatsoever. The gore in this movie is not done to scare. What Tobe Hooper knew when he directed the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is that no matter what you show, no matter how violent you can make a film, nothing is scarier than the imagination.
There is a very scary scene in "Saw III" with a naked woman hanging from a hook by a rope tied around her hands. She is in a giant freezer and water eventually sprays at her, freezing her body. It is a brilliant, creative and horrifying method of death but the problem is the way it is shot. The movie has absolutely no problem showing this woman's naked body in the full, hanging, screaming, and being sprayed with ice water as she pleads for help.
What have we come to? Why must we see her privates? There is nothing artistic or erotic in this scene and it made me more afraid of what the director does behind private doors than of the main villain, "Jigsaw."