Billed as the final film in the series, Saw 3D is the first of the new decade, and though it's hardly worse than the sequels that preceded it, it is looking more and more out of step with the times. Despite its detractors being that much louder than any of its fans, Saw was undeniably the horror franchise most emblematic of the Bush II administration era, in the same way that watching a Nightmare on Elm Street film can’t help but make you think Reagan’s still in office. But whether or not the Saw films will leave the lasting impression that those films did remains to be seen, and based on this installment, a more than fair argument could be made that it will not. While the central themes of Saw could scarcely have better embodied the concerns of the last decade, its images and characters haven’t matched it in vitality.
After a flashback to Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) crawling away from the events of the first film and Ryan and Brad (Jon Corr and Sebastian Pigott) from the third, Jill Tuck (Betsy Russell), the widow of the enigmatic killer Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), goes to internal affairs investigator Matt Gibson (Chad Donella) and tells him that, in exchange for immunity, she will implicate Mark Hoffman (Costas Manylor) in later Jigsaw crimes. Meanwhile, Hoffman abducts Bobby Dagen (Sean Patrick Flanery), a self-help author who is falsely claiming to have been a survivor of Jigsaw’s crimes, and puts him through a series of signature death traps. But there’s more than one jigsaw killer on the loose, and Hoffman is not the only one pulling the strings.
At the heart of every Saw film is Jigsaw, a strange-looking little cancer patient who has decided that people simply don’t appreciate the value of their own life enough. Most of us are tempted to think that he has a point, but rather than sending a Hallmark card, he’s decided that the best way to make people realize this is to put them in all sorts of loony contraptions and force them to do horrible things to escape but live horrendously disfigured. The idea that most people would be grateful for this kind of experience, and would feel compelled to repeat it on other people has provided the backbone of this series, as well as the biggest jump in narrative logic that has kept the films from getting a larger mainstream audience. In reality, it’s hard to imagine that anyone would do anything but press charges and/or try to kill him, but such is the rationale behind film after film.
But let’s take a look at this life-altering experience. The idea that, once exposed to trauma, an ordinary person could be driven to previously unthinkable violence has been gestating in horror films for a long time, but came to be the dominant character arc of nearly every major horror film in the last ten years (notably the Hostel films, 28 Days Later, and The Descent). It’s a solid enough conclusion, and certainly a prescient one as people grew to spend more and more time interacting with each other online rather than in-person, as well as a somewhat obvious answer to the sorts of questions that people were asking themselves in the wake of 9/11. By numbers alone, it’s obvious that Saw’s vision of redemptive violence was the most appealing, if only because it was the direct (or, again, obvious) address to those questions. But what about Saw filmically reflects all those issues? Surprisingly little.
If you name any other major horror franchise, you can pretty easily name two things: the villain, and a central image that somehow reflects the killer’s M.O. There are several different images that have reappeared throughout Saw, and they’re all kind of lame. The pig’s head? That doll on the tricycle? All sorts of little spiral things? It’s kind of amazing that they didn’t just go ahead and put some little British kid with glowing red eyes in there for good measure. Worst of all, the film is so preoccupied with these tricks that Jigsaw’s characterization is consistently pushed to the background, his beliefs and methods requiring that little exposition. If this film is any indication, that, rather than any thematic grandeur, will be the ultimate legacy of the Saw films: the death of the horror movie villain. Sure, more intangible ideas have served as effective villains in the past, but by placing the evildoer (with whom we’re presumably supposed to identify on some level) so far behind his own tricks, Saw has created a cinema of violence rather than one of evil, which horror presumably needs to survive.
This has admittedly been more of a summation of the series than a review of this particular film, although that seems to be what it was trying to invite all along, what with its ‘final chapter’ moniker and its ending that references the first so redolently that it just seems to be begging to brings its circle to a close (not that it ever gained that much distance from the original). It is violent, oddly shot, and totally disinterested in anything but the mechanics of what happens to its characters, just like all of the others. By the time it’s done (the film and the series), you may have been entertained (it’s fairly subjective), but it’s unlikely that you’ll really be disturbed at a really profound level, or at least as disturbed as you feel you should be. That kind of effect only comes from an experience where you sense that the people involved had to transgress social and personal borders to a conclusion that bothered even them; unfortunately, neither the ‘final chapter’ or any of the films preceding it ever do.
Bonus Features
The Blu-ray also contains commentaries by the writers and producers, deleted and extended scenes, music videos, the theatrical trailer, and “52 Ways To Die”, a recounting of all the different deaths in all seven films.
"Saw 3D: The Final Chapter" is on sale January 25, 2011 and is rated R. Horror. Directed by Kevin Greutert. Written by Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan. Starring Betsy Russell, Cary Elwes, Costas Mandylor, Sean Patrick Flanery, Tobin Bell.
