2/3 not bad 1/3 rubbish

Rating: 5/10 (2 December 2009)

The makers of Saw III construct the film the way a preschool child makes a block tower. For the first hour Saw III is not only more freaky than Saw but it is one of the freakiest of slasher films. With each new block placed on top of another, the scenario gets more extreme, until one block too many causes the whole thing to collapse. The last twenty to thirty minutes of the film are a clumsy error of epic proportions. It is hard to say whether the makers were looking for away to bring an end to the Saw series or a way to continue it. All I can tell you is that what starts of pretty good turns into the kind of thing that makes you loose complete faith in James Wan, just another young mind who had a brilliant Idea which he took too far and is now six movies.
Jigsaw is dying. and his apprentice kidnaps a young nurse, straps an explosive device around her neck, which will go off the minute Jigsaw's heart rate stops. That doesn't give her a lot of time to save his life. Meanwhile on the other side of his layer, Jigsaw's next victim is about to play the game.
The one advantage that Saw II had over Saw what that we got to meet Jigsaw himself, not the puppet. Jobin Bell did his best to bring a large dose of Hannibal Lector to the role, something which he was not able to do twice. In Saw III, he is no more than a piece of rotting flesh spewing badly scripted lines. I blame the script writers more than Bell for the lousy characterization of Jigsaw in this movie.
The climactic twist is the most frustrating part of the film, because not only do you see it coming, but it wrecks the movie. Had the filmmakers thought things through a little better, Saw III may have been good enough to make the idea of Saw IV sound promising. For once I'd like to see a horror franchise in which each entry is just as inventive as the previous.