During the glory days of horror cinema, otherwise known as the era of the Universal Monster, audiences could anticipate being presented with a fresh, engaging idea with each new installment of their favorite villain of the period. With the passing of the decades after film’s initial conception, as money superceded cinema’s overriding concern of being an art form first and foremost, we are met with the co-creator and co-screenwriter for each chapter in the Saw series, Leigh Whannell, a true artist of his time in that throughout the horror series, he retains the franchise’s theme while going on to explore various facets of said idea. Not only does Saw III attempt to offer something to an audience who has been trained to expect nothing of substance in that the title contains numbers after its name, but it does so in the tradition of the last era of true film, the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Doctor Lynn Denlon (Bahar Soomekh) is kidnapped. She awakens to find herself amid the notorious Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) and his apprentice, Amanda (Shawnee Smith). She is told that her life is dependent upon the impromptu operation which is will be performing upon the cancer-laden mastermind as another character, Jeff (Angus Macfayden) undergoes a series of his own tests.
At the close of the sequel to Saw, it is heavily implied that Jigsaw is dead and that the character of Amanda will continue his life’s work should a trilogy present itself. When Saw III opens, to our amazement, we discover that John Kramer is still alive, though in a very inhibited state (which, in itself tests plausibility considering the number of medications and various IV tubes connected to him in the previous installment). This–amid Jigsaw’s m.o., most anyone could be cited as having fault for housing ethical skeletons in their closet, and that the film’s dual plots and various back stories all dilute the tension–are the only qualms to be had with Darren Lynn Bousman’s follow-up to his own masterfully deceptive sequel to James Wan’s surprise blockbuster, Saw, as the filmmaker presents yet another very competent, challenging examination upon the topic of normative ethics.
In the original chapter, the value of life is presented and scrutinized before Saw II explores hubris in relation to altruism before the we are cleverly given a scenario which questions the human propensity toward vengeance in the wake of the justification or the implausible correction of the past amid the possibility to reconcile oneself with the present atop the possibility of enacting a “might makes right” philosophy in lieu of one’s irrefutable humanity. Thus, not only does the series avoid the all-too-common tendency to rely upon formula, but it once again presents a variation upon a substantive theme, a cinematic fugue of sorts, in a genre and a period in which much less is not only acceptable, but expected, as it successfully forces its audience to suspend passing judgment until the final frame, unlike many of its more renowned peers within the thriller genre.
Amazingly, as with its predecessors, each torture/death sequence within the film, much like Dante’s Inferno, itself an examination of ethics, can be interpreted as symbolic of the essence of that particular person’s sins (even during the brief homage to Clive Barker’s Hellraiser as Troy, played by J. LaRose, is pulled apart by chains adhered to his body), my personal favorite being a girl named Danica (Debra McCabe), who dies immobile as she is frozen to death as punishment for fleeing the scene of a crime. Aside from being reminiscent of the Italian poet’s own eternal condemnation of suicide victims, who find themselves in the form of static trees in the afterlife as penitence for having fled life, there exists the dualistic irony that Danica’s death is a consequence of Jeff’s unwillingness to act upon the female’s behalf.
Not surprisingly, Bousman pauses to legitimize the coupling of John with Amanda in the franchise’s previous installment, thereby expounding upon what came before (again a rare trait for contemporary cinema as well as the genre) as, reasonably, it is revealed that John’s illness cannot be tended to in a proper medical facility due the police having discovered his identity in Part II. However, and perhaps sadly, we are treated to something which is not typical of such astute filmmaking for the film closes, for the first time in the series, as an obvious cliffhanger, unfortunate in that Part IV, at the time of this review, does not house any of the original creators of the previous features, many of which worked closely, albeit it various capacities, on the trilogy.
James Wan, Leigh Whannell, and Darren Lynn Bousman will undoubtedly enter the halls of horror fame for having given the world Saw, Parts I-III. Arguably, the ensemble, along with the various other crew members who made the trilogy possible, deserve much more for their presentation of Jigsaw and his examination of the human predicament in its various forms and guises as the films’ modernized Aesop’s Fables congeal into a very admirable and cohesive whole (again, during a time when sequels are permitted to blatantly ignore what came before due to creative lethargy, aesthetic apathy, and the financers’ demand for spectacle above logic), so much so that the works could be viewed as an epic, continuous postmodern examination upon ethics on a level comparable to many of the great works of cinema.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
