Movie Review: 'Saw 3D'

In what was thought to be the final installment of the Saw films all seemed to finally come clear to me about this oddly brilliant horror franchise. The murderous Jigsaw, played by Tobin Bell, is the vengeful Old Testament God and his victims are the sinners being delivered through anguish and deciding whether they will repent and live on or die horribly. Biblical scholars can take issue if they like. It’s a loose metaphor but it fits.

Each of the Saw films has been about sinners who have taken life for granted and/or somehow wronged others with their carelessness. After having been the subject of many wrongs, Jigsaw decided to take fate into his hands and correct the behavior of the sinners around him by teaching them to value life. This is where morality and Jigsaw collide. Clearly what Jigsaw does, setting elaborate death traps, is wrong but his purpose has a twisted sort of clarity that cannot be escaped.

The fact is, in the best of Jigsaw’s traps, the victim has an opportunity to survive and redeem themselves. The victim is shown their sin and given the chance to repent. Does this justify placing people in deadly circumstances? No, vigilantes are almost always wrong. However, I may not condone Jigsaw’s actions but I understand them and the best part of Saw 3D is that director Kevin Greutert understands it as well.

The seventh picture in the Saw series picks up with Jigsaw’s apprentice, the man carrying on his vicious legend, Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor), narrowly escaping a Jigsaw trap set on him by Jigsaw’s wife, Jill Tuck (Betsy Russell). Now, Hoffman wants revenge. Meanwhile, even as Hoffman is obsessed with killing Jill Tuck, Hoffman sets Jigsaw’s final traps for one last gloriously gory lesson.

A self-help guru named Bobby Dagen (Sean Patrick Flanery) has made a mint off of claiming he survived one of Jigsaw’s games. Dagen wrote a book about learning to appreciate life after having come so close to dying. Dagen even goes as far as hosting a meeting of other Jigsaw survivors in order to promote a DVD of his self-help philosophy.

Of course, Dagen is a big, fat liar. He made the whole thing up with the help of a complicit lawyer, a helpful publicist, and a greedy agent. Naturally, all of these people, along with Dagen’s unsuspecting wife, will have to pay for their sins, but whether each lives or dies will be up to Dagen and how much he is willing to endure to save the people who’ve made his life possible.

Saw 3D is the sneakiest of each of the Saw films. I didn’t get the sly inside joke of the plot until days after seeing the film. Dagen, you see, is a stand-in for people who think Jigsaw is, in some way, a hero. Dagen has deified Jigsaw by taking his teachings and turning them into a pseudo-philosophy. There are those who admire Jigsaw’s message and Greutert uses Saw 3D to take those people to task.

This intention on the part of the director becomes clear with some of the most brutal deaths in Saw history. Greutert and his effects team, especially the Foley guys, the people in charge of creating the sound of bones breaking and flesh tearing, hold nothing back in the 3D demonstration of blood and viscera. The blood and bone flying at the screen is disgusting on its own, but the sound of these deaths is somehow even more elaborate and disturbing.

That leads me to another point about Saw 3D and another ingenious element of this series; you don’t have to be a hardcore fan to get it. Each of the Saw films offers a central story that is easily in the grasp of first-time Saw watchers. In Saw 3D, Dagen’s challenge is so clever that it plays with or without the back-story that has been so intricately woven through each of these films.

Certainly, the whole thing plays better for fans, but it’s a testament to the quiet, underestimated genius of this series that each film contains enough stand-alone elements and just enough explanation that you can jump in at any point and follow along. You are more rewarded if you start from the beginning, but it’s not entirely necessary.

I have come to terms with the fact that I see something in the Saw movies that most other critics and moviegoers don’t. I’ve even spoken to Saw fans who look at me a little sideways when I express my effusive appreciation of how brilliant these movies are. Sure, the gore is hard to watch but if you give it a chance, the Saw movies have this dark, twisted brilliance that challenges your morality and forces you to consider how much you appreciate your life and the lives of others. How many films, let alone horror films, can you say that about?