SAW 3D

Starring: Tobin Bell, Costas Mandylor, Sean Patrick Flanery, Cary Elwes

Genre: Horror

Director: Kevin Greutert

Rated: R

It’s Halloween and this marks the 7^th year in a row for a new saw film. This time in 3D

With Jigsaw long dead Hoffman is set to finish up his masterwork as well as tie up all the loose ends including putting an end to Jigsaws wife Jill who tried to kill him.

The Saw series has gone from clever and gruesome to the cinematic equivalent of a musty fart in a closed room, it stinks, it lingers and it won’t go away. The longer the series continues the more it strays away from the original concept of the film. The whole point of Jigsaw kidnapping people was that they had committed some form of sin and he was giving them a chance to validate there life by enduring and overcoming some form of intricate trap. The premise that the trap will entail a very painful physical sacrifice thus saving the participants life or an inability to complete the task thus ensuring certain death is gone. In its place is a nonsensical opening sequence involving a love triangle that guarantees someone is going to die, this one done in broad daylight in full public display, going against the entire MO of all the previous films.

Costas Mandylor is back in the miscast role of Hoffman who is set to finish Jigsaws work. Mandylor is once again the weakest link in the series not bringing an ounce of believability to his character; the weak script even has Hoffman turning into some form of Assassin who dispatches a skeleton crew of Police officers by walking through the precinct and stabbing them in the neck one by one. For some unexplained reason Hoffman who at this point has his identity compromised finds the time to hunt down Jigsaws wife, Make a tape of himself giving clues to the police and still perform jigsaws work without a rational explanation.

The other main Plot Point is based on Bobby (Sean Patrick Flannery who is now unrecognizable) a jigsaw survivor fraud who is utilizing his tall tale for riches and must go through a maze of traps trying to save the PR team and wife who have helped build him into a pseudo celebrity self help guru. This whole story makes no sense as there is no reason for Hoffman to go through the trouble of setting this up.

The opening scene with the love triangle is an insult to the audience and is only in the film for a cheap 3D intestine gimmick. The intricate puzzles and contraptions that the series has made its trademark have been replaced by Superglue on a car seat, a noose on a winch and the crudest torture devices since the inquisition. SAW 3D also blunders its only shot of redemption by giving billing to Cary Elwes and utilizing him for more than the final scene. The opening sequence showing what happened to Elwes after the ending of the first movie is unnecessary as is the entire Jigsaw survivors group he is in. These two scenes give what could have been an exceptional ending away within the first 15 minutes of the film. Any film that utilizes the Dream sequence for an additional torture scene, rather than find an intelligent and coherent way to incorporate it into the actual story, is a series that has long run out of valid ideas. In the end the real torture of the film is played out on the audience for sticking with it the past few films.

Grade-54