And so we reach ‘Saw 3D’ (also known as ‘Saw 7’, Also known as ‘Saw: The Final Chapter’) And a ‘thrilling’ closer to the ‘Saw’ franchise that ties EVERYTHING off, leaving no loose threads and does so in such a way thats a delight to audiences who must have left the theaters feeling fulfilled and Satisfy-Im just kidding. This things a hot mess.
The plot picks up where the last film ended, Hoffmans still on the run, Jill has decided to go into police protection and is willing to dish the dirt on all of Hoffmans antics and a new game begins! This one involving a self help guru who’s in the process of selling his latest book where he talks about how he ‘Survived Jigsaw’ and used the experience to better himself as a person. This goes as far as a scene in which survivors of Jigsaws traps are brought together as a support group (with several cameos from the last few ‘Saw’ films) to discuss what happened after they survived the traps.
Its all well and good, except for one problem. The Guru has NEVER been trapped by Jigsaw. Its all a hoax…until now. He’s captured and set a 60 minute multi trap challenge involving his publicist, motivator, wife and others with his own trap challenges along the way. With plenty of twists and turns to keep things going!
And this really is just quite a poor way to bow out the franchise really. The only solidly good thing I can say about it is the traps are actually really solid in this one, they’re interesting to see unfold and that the script does have moments of genuine interest.
But for all intents and purposes, the germination of ‘Saws’ transition from a psychological horror thriller series into just a gory slasher series is complete with this one. Gore and violence is held WAY above any kind of narrative strands, the MASSIVE plot twists and reveals from the first 2 or 3 ‘Saw’ movies are a thing of the past, as the film not ONLY continues its deviation from the original rules of the first film by just, straight up murdering innocent people as part collateral for the guilty persons crimes. But it also forgets that, for the audience, ‘Saw’ puzzles are only entertaining if theres a chance some of them *could* survive.
This film is part of the problem thats been developing now for about 2-3 of these films. By basically killing everyone, you set the expectation of ANYONE surviving these things to zero…Which damages the scripting across the board. It means you dont get invested in any characters because you know they wont make it to the end, its just a question of how soon they’ll exit. But it also damages the film in the sense that, by not having survivors, you consistently make this a lone character piece. When some of the most interesting moments from past ‘Saw’ films have been when characters have been able to group up after surviving their traps and use their mixed skills to try and work out alternatives to the existing puzzles.
As such, because of how they’ve made this thing, it all becomes incredibly predictable very VERY quickly. With any plot twists that DID turn up being either pre guessed…or worse, totally stupid. With one particularly BIG reveal in the 3rd act (which I wont mention here) that basically RE-retcons the ENTIRE franchise inserting ANOTHER character into proceedings who we’ve not seen or heard from AT ANY POINT up until this one. Which made me audibly groan.
The scripts kind of dull ultimately, its your standard A-plot with the cops, B-plot with the guru solving puzzles. But its all slow burn on the A-plot, and its a slow burn to nothing ultimately, with the B-plot being the more interesting of the two, but also being repetative, silly and at times downright awful.
The pacing is slower than usual, but just about manages to keep up, the tone is a little wonky here too, theres a couple of more comedy driven moments…Im not entirely convinced if they *were* supposed to be comedy moments…But they didnt work for me.
Our characters are seriously under-developed too, they basically jettison half of the loose threads from the end of ‘Saw 6’ with a gloss over pre-titles sequence that annoyed me.
Its a bad script in my opinion, a good idea. just…REALLY badly executed…and if, as they imply here, they were considering ending (or at least long pausing) the franchise here with THIS!? then it only makes the dissapointment even greater.
The direction and cine are fine. its continuing to build on the style and pacing from the previous entries, this one has a bit more of a nuance on the colour grade, which I was happy with. But otherwise, its a reletively solid work for the most part, its compositionally well handled, well blocked, the sequences are well constructed (though the heavy emphisis on the ‘3D’ elements and total lack of creative editing as seen in the last 2-3 movies is a bit of a letdown) I continue to appreciate that they save their flashback/retroactive revisions for clustered specific portions of the movie, rather than making it feel like this is just the deleted scenes of ‘Saw’ 3-6 cut together with 10 minutes of new footage.
I dont think however that this looks or feels any better than ‘Saw’ 5 or 6 and if anything it kind of feels basic comparatively. Same with the scoring, same with the performances…Like…they arnt *bad*, they just arnt great and they certainly arnt anything better than whats come before.
I dunno, I kind of liked the vibe this one gave off, I could see myself putting it on again at some point, but I dont think I could really recommend it. Its a good idea executed badly and a really poor way to round of what, at best, up to this point has been a middling to poor franchise.
‘Saw’ a franchise with good ideas, and terrible decisions.
TYTD Reviews 