Saw III (2006)

Movie Info

I saw Hellraiser…this won’t end well.
Jigsaw will tear your soul apart!

Detective Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) has disappeared and presumed a victim of Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) while Detective Allison Kerry (Dina Meyer) continues to hunt the psychotic killer.  When a doctor named Lynn Denlon (Bahar Soomekh) is taken hostage and ordered to help Jigsaw by Jigsaw’s protégé Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith), Dr. Denlon finds herself caught in a dangerous game where if she fails to save the dying man’s life, she too could die.  Meanwhile, a desperate man named Jeff (Angus Macfadyn) finds himself the latest man trapped in Jigsaw’s puzzle of death.

Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, Saw III is a gore-horror survival film.  Following Saw II in 2005, the movie (like most Saw films) was met with poor reviews but a massive box office return.

I don’t love Saw films, but I give Saw films this.  Instead of just restarting and having Jigsaw torturing a new batch of people every film, the series tries to advance and grow the mythos of Jigsaw while advancing the story…I just don’t always love how it is done.

I’ll be your friend to the end, Lynn

The whole Jigsaw game doesn’t make much sense.  The idea is that the people caught in his trap have committed a crime or sin against others.  It feels like it evolved from the much smarter Seven by David Fincher, but that film had characters crimes lead to their judgment.  Here, Jigsaw often keeps bringing in others who are innocent while punishing the “guilty” and which can potentially warp a person even if they are spared.  It does it in a way that drags and goes on too long.  This entry in particular has a lot of pieces moving at once, and it sometimes feels disjointed and less cohesive than the other films.

I give credit to Tobin Bell for his increasingly difficult portrayal of the dying Jigsaw.  I also have always been a Shawnee Smith fan so it is nice to see her getting back into a major leading role in the last couple films.  Bahar Soomekh is an interesting secondary lead, and you do feel for her.

Hey Jiggy…you gave yourself a little nick while shaving

With crazy trap after trap, it feels like the set-up for the Saw movies is probably where the story starts and the plot goes around them.  The traps are sometimes frustrating because it feels like the characters think sometimes but act completely irrational other times like leaning against frozen pipes when he could use almost anything to put something between himself and the pipes or something simply to snag the key.  There is also a lot of “wait” as the character let precious time tick by before they act…leaving them with only seconds to fix things.

Saw III starts to fall into a really annoying pattern.  The movie should be called Flashback because it feels like half the movie is becoming the “big reveal” at the end where you get multiple reveals that are becoming less and less clever or surprising.  Fortunately, you never quite know where the next Saw is headed which smartly keeps viewers coming back.  Saw III was followed by Saw IV in 2007.

Related Links:

Saw (2004)

Saw II (2005)

Saw IV (2007)

Saw V (2008)

Saw VI (2009)

Saw 3D (2010)

Jigsaw (2017)