I have been hypothesizing ever since Saw IV about the series’ slow, steady death, kept afloat merely by adequate box office. Saw VI seemed to ring that bell, performing well under expectations – possibly because Paranormal Activity stole its thunder, possibly because of memories of how much Saw V sucked. At any rate, the decree was put out, that the seventh Saw would be the final Saw. Never-leaving screenwriting Saw-yers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan were press ganged to meld their ideas for a potential Saw VIII (ah, so they do plan far in advance! – they knew how lame Saw V was!) all together into Saw VII.
Saw VII?! Try Saw 3D. For on top of crowing publicly how this is the “final” Saw, they had another tricksy gimmick to lure in jerks’ money. (As for that “finality,” any series with longevity patterns similar to Friday the 13th doesn’t simply end like this. Hell, the word “final” appears twice in Friday films – The Final Chapter and The Final Friday – and each time twas a lie. [They also use the word “new” two times, but that’s not today’s concern…] Anyway, Saw 3D’s not so much “final” as it is just the start of a lull in production – though calling it “final” increases potential box office, which decreases its likely “finality,” meaning – Oh, my brain hurts!)
Where was I?! Oh right, so Saw 3D is in 3D – Hence they had to deviate from their elegant sequel-naming pattern to trumpet that fact. Isn’t it enough to know any genre sequel put out in 2010 is automatically in 3D?! Oh well…
It’ll be difficult to address the plot and content of this thing without resorting to spoilers or a full-on summary, especially since these Saw films seem to demand such an approach. Whatever, it’s easy enough to note several different bifurcated threads now expected of a Saw sequel. Hell, each sequel introduces new, contrary, bipolar needs, far more than the original Saw ever had to contend with. How does this artless argument work?
# 1. An innocent person in a devious trap – The first Saw was founded, essentially, upon the notion of awaking chained in a restroom, like some frat stunt gone very, very awry. All else – the details defining the Jigsaw Killer – were just details. As sequels came about, this necessary plot construct remained – with a rotating roster of new victims much like new teenagers to a summer camp. Most horror franchises would be contented with simply repeating this format ad nauseum, but the Saw-quels needed more. Much more…
# 2. The never-ending soap opera of Jigsaw and his many, many apprentices – Saw II climaxed by revealing Jigsaw, the robe-wearing trap-maker (a trappist monk), had a buddy in Amanda. Opening this Pandora’s Box, and delving more and more into Jigsaw’s jig-job, demands the mythology expand ever more in each successive sequel – like a Jenga game coming ever closer to toppling. By the start of Saw 3D, there have now been (at least) three Junior Jigsaws, each one revealed in a new twist ending. One starts to expect this twist.
# 3. The sadly necessary police investigation – Around the time of Saw III, continuing cop characters were getting bumped off as though the series was ending. And yet it didn’t, so new cop leads had to be promoted on an almost per-entry basis, much like the revolving victim roster. These guys are boring (and surprisingly incompetent), but they’re needed to offer up insight and confusion in regards to the former need, mythology. Keep in mind, this strand is usually 80% independent of the victims and the killers, making it just another unrelated subplot – until the twist can come around to resolve it all.
# 4. Somehow maintaining Jigsaw’s presence - Saw IV’s challenge was to keep star Tobin Bell around as John Kramer, the Jigsaw Killer, even after his body had been systematically processed into countless different sausages. There are two methods to this – One is to state, by fiat, that each new scheme (basically, # 1, the victims’ traps) is yet another game Jigsaw worked out one day on the john prior to his death. (This undercuts what minimal impact trapper keeper Detective Hoffman, the active killer, has.)
The other method is to force in ever more flashbacks to Kramer’s life, adding more and more new information until that dam is ready to burst – a leaking dam and a toppling Jenga, the two metaphors this franchise suggests. Like all these approaches, this one frays with time, losing its potency, believability, surprise and usefulness, like a rope stretched too thin – ooh, another metaphor. (Oh, and these flashbacks too remain mostly independent from all other plot threads!)
# 5. Twists, twists, twists – Twists did not originate with Saw V, but boy was that flick hampered by the need to withhold all useful plot-furthering until the final 8 minutes. It doesn’t help that its twist(s) reeked, barely adding anything. As long as new sequels could come afterwards, one could always over-plan for them, under-delivering on this year’s product. And Saw V simply existed to fashion a last-minute twist, and to prop up the far superior Saw VI.
# 6. Oh right, and heaping sluices of gore too! – Dribbling pus buckets of biological slime sort of peaked with Saw III, but they keep trying (as much as the MPAA will allow, at least). See Saw VI’s efforts to wring out whatever new forms of evisceration hadn’t previously been exploited, while also increasing the mental and moral torture. Hence the addition of a literally rotating victim roster, in the form of its merry-go-round trap. Of all the Saw deliverables, this one at least isn’t plot-dependent, and really is what all horror often does. But inspiration does wane.
Saw 3D even adds its own new notion to this list:
# 7. Openly satirizing (and even parodying) the Saw concept as much as Saw allows – One of Saw 3D’s genuine new ideas is to examine the Jigsaw survivors, now so numerous they hold crowded AA-style meetings on a weekly basis – though casting issues creates many new survivors we’ve never seen before, calling Jigsaw’s reach into question. No matter, the founding premise that Jigsaw’s traps (if survived) improve one’s life, this notion is questioned mightily. It is poked, torn into and eviscerated as badly as one of Jigsaw’s test subjects. Thankfully, this latest thread (self-parody being necessary for even the most dour, humorless multi-sequel horror franchise – that being Saw) is sub-textual, and leads directly into what Saw 3D does with #1.
# 1 (Victims) – Victim Numero Uno in 3D is Bobby Dagen (Boondock Saint Sean Patrick Flannery), a self-help guru whose media fame comes from whoring his ostensible Jigsaw survival. Considering he’s been in no films before – though my Saw memory is crumbling just enough for me to question this – one is right to question Bobby’s boasting. Indeed, it is a lie, pure hogwash, and it’s just amazing this fable could escape the notice of the freaking police…No, wait, these are the police in Saw. But why would you build a fortune on openly taunting a still-alive serial killer like this?! It is to Saw as driving to an abandoned campground is to slasher movies. And it knows it.
So…Bobby is captured, and forced through exactly the same predicament as the protagonists of Saws III and VI – to wander a chronological series of other people’s demises, with an hour to save his own wife. No points for originality! This path is themed off his book, allowing a deconstruction of the Saw M.O. which ain’t all that clever, but I’ll take it. “S.U.R.V.I.V.E.,” each letter a new trial for Bobby, even while his co-conspirators – his publicist, his lawyer, and his other guy – only number three. Their traps and sadly inescapable deaths – which I shan’t spoil here, for ‘tis the blogger’s code – seem themed on hearing, seeing and speaking no evil. You know, those three sinless monkeys? Just which is which, though, I cannot say.
The thing is this cannot have much to do with the other threads, despite a last minute police incursion. On top of satisfying nebulous self-satire, Bobby’s odyssey hasn’t much to offer. For series concerns really now lie in –
# 2 (Killer mythos) – Right, so Saw VI ended with the promise of Kramer’s two surviving protégés going head-to-head, a battle royale with traps as the weapon. Given the epic Saw-down I’d primed for, it’s disappointing that the newest villain, Jill Tuck (Betsy Russell) – Kramer’s ex-wife – pretty much instantly caves to police protection. That leaves Hoffman (Costas Mandylor, finally exhibiting some villainous charisma three films too late) as the only trap-happy Jigsaw junky. Even while he’s achieving Bobby’s belittling for no reason except the formulaic (and because it was next in Kramer’s potentially bottomless to-do pile), Hoffman has the time to play the entire police force like so many Billy puppets in an effort to reach Jill in her jail cell.
Jill seriously disappoints in this entry, reduced at the very end to literally a big-chested blonde racing around helplessly, hiding uselessly, and not picking up the copious available weapons. Yeesh, this is Slasher 101! I really can’t believe they went there!
There is more to the mythos than that (there always is), but it is twist dependent, so it’ll go mostly unuttered.
# 3 (Police) – Because Jill (and the screenwriters) have exhausted the possibilities of both the detectives and the FBI, our police protagonist presently is Internal Affairs officer Matt Gibson (Chad Donella, of the other ‘00s horror franchise, Final Destination), who has never appeared before now. That’s how stretched this thread is, there is no one left but brand new ciphers – not much life expectancy there.
By now, even the cops know Hoffman is the killer (three or so films after audiences worked it out). Gibson’s quest to catch him is spurred on by an opening trap – not the opening trap, for those are purely ceremonial at this point (the one today made unique by a nifty public display angle that is never again visited). No, Gibson’s investigation begins when…well, all I can say is a car severs several ciphers (racists), in a moment of pure nuttiness that is the acme of a certain Saw mindset (goo-drenched and gigglesome). Clues are ladled about so again the audience sees them before Gibson does (and we’re not even given any advantages). Some cops race to stop the Bobby game, others attempt to capture Hoffman, and – well, let’s leave the rest of this to the Gore section…
# 4 (Kramer’s flashbacks) – There are so many threads to juggle now, and one had to falter. Why’d it have to be this one?! Without exaggeration, first-billed performer Tobin Bell gets literally under 2 minutes of screen time here, in one scene and one video tape! Bad call!
You’d think that means they’re actually trying to rely upon Costas Mandylor now – HA! Rather, it’s because at last we get the return of Saw I’s Dr. Lawrence “Gimpy” Gordon (Cary Elwes, more effectively villainous than Mandylor – in a performance far better than that in Saw). That’s all well and good, except…well, let’s just say Gordon is in only one scene. (Or is he?)
# 5 (Spoilers) – SPOILER!
SPOILER!
SPOILER!
I won’t flat out reveal 3D’s twists, but I will hint strongly. Think about it. What twist have they abused time and again in these films? And what cast member is given very little to do?...That’s right, it turns out John Kramer is John Kramer’s latest assistant!...Wait, that doesn’t make sense.
I lied, lied about Jigsaw – Uh oh!, he’s gonna target me Bobby-style now!
The other twist (‘cause there’s gotta be two) is simply this: Creating the impression of finality. That basically means a climax of such vicious, outrageous proportions, it’s sort of like the Godfather baptism of the horror genre. (Seriously, 3D doubles VI’s already ridiculous body count, nearly halving the rest of the series’ combined. Huzzah!) (Meaning about 70% of the deaths in Saw are from the last two – yup, it’s horror sequelitis defined.) So, pretty much everybody is dead by the end, except the people who’ve secretly been kept alive for the inevitable gritty reboot. I’d only buy things as truly final if Saw-ville was nuked, but oh well.
(Some thoughts on what city this takes place in: Cin-Saw-nnati, Saw-cago, Saw-n Francisco, Lo-Saw-ngeles, Saw-nta Fe, Punx-Saw-tawney. I could do more, but let’s keep it to the U.S.)
# 6 (Gore) – An intestine hit my face. Some other stuff too. There’s very little from the latter half of 3D in the trailer, simply because it’d be unallowable to show. It didn’t squick me out – III’s brain surgery remains unassailable – but seeing a Saw theatrically sure suggests differing opinions. But the eye-gougings never reach full Fulcian levels, as the editing pace remains pretty loco. We often cut away before they get cut away, if you follow, but still…This is the mightiest gore 2010 will offer, methinks.
That’s a beastly load of strands to keep together, even without scads of flashbacks to flash back to. This’d be a challenge to hold together, even in the best of circumstances. For some silly, silly reason, producers wanted director Daryl Hackl, of the boring, boring Saw V. That was until they realized Saw V was boring. Rather, they exercised a legal clause Kramer himself would be proud of, forcing back VI’s much better Kevin Greutert even while forcing him away from otherwise directing Paranormal Activity 2 (that’s so amusing). He gets the job done, not quite as well as VI I’d say, but about as well as you’d expect an irate director at gunpoint could. With 3D filming equipment. When he’d started filming the same day he first read the script. And then rewrote it. And had the sets changed. Yeahhhh…
The Saw series isn’t over with, oh no, though 3D is final enough to warrant watching these things in close succession. But no matter, come money, desperation, eventual nostalgia, some day there’ll be another Saw. At the very least, set your calendars for the 2034 remake – maybe that’ll be able to do what no Saw could, and really work out the original restroom premise. But until then –
GAME OVER!
Related posts:
• No. 1 Saw (2004)
• No. 2 Saw II (2005)
• No. 3 Saw III (2006)
• No. 4 Saw IV (2007)
• No. 5 Saw V (2008)
• No. 6 Saw VI (2009)
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