It is as if they somehow read my review of Saw II, and they decided to do the opposite of everything I said I enjoyed. Everything I liked or thought I could like about the series was completely removed from this third installment. I do not regret watching the series, but I’m starting to get close.

The film picks up sometime after the second film ended. (The timeline on these movies is very muddled. It is unclear when anything takes place.) The film follows Jigsaw, played again, although this time, not as well by Tobin Bell. His cancer diagnosis has progressed, and he is now bedridden and in desperate need of emergency surgery. He and his assistant Amanda, played by Shawnee Smith, kidnap a young doctor named Lynn, played by Behar Soomekh, in order to save his life.

Of course, being Jigsaw, he cannot ask for help. He must coerce her with an overly elaborate game and a rig designed to blow her head off if his heart stops beating.

While all that is going on, a man named Jeff, played by Angus Macfadyen, is being put through a different series of jigsaw traps. Jeff lost his young son in a drunk driving accident, and jigsaw feels that Jeff should mourn his lost child less and enjoy the life he has more. The best way to do that is through torture and murder. Flawless logic. I believe grief counselors often prescribe drowning someone in pig guts in order to move past emotional trauma.

One thing I almost enjoyed about Saw II was the escape room feeling it had. A series of deadly puzzles that must be solved before time runs out is a fun idea. In this film, the puzzles are so poorly explained and so complicated that it is is unclear what exactly is supposed to be happening. Let’s take the pig guts for instance. Jeff enters a room where a man is strapped to the bottom of a vat that is slowly filling up with pig guts. This man is the lawyer who defended the man who killed Jeff’s son. The vat is slowly filling up with pig guts. Jeff must incinerate his sons belongings in order to get a key. I think it’s the key to unlock the man, but it might be the key to get out of the room. So what happens if Jeff leaves the man to die? Not sure. Does Jeff have to incinerate his sons stuff in order to escape? What happens if he doesn’t rescue the man? I still have zero clue as to the answers to any of these questions. It’s just incineration, and a man drowning in pig guts. Nasty for nasty’s sake.

The only other thing I could see kind of liking from the second movie is the empathetic response of putting yourself in the shoes of the people on screen. If I was in this situation, what would I do? How would I escape? This movie takes away the possibility of escape. An early trap has a woman strapped to a device that will kill her unless she can get the key out of a jar of acid. She reach in and melts her hand and gets the key only to realize that there was nowhere for the key to go. No way to be unlocked from the device. This is where the movie became torture porn. It’s just torture with no hope for escape. We are forced to wallow in the misery depicted on screen with no hope. After that I checked out. I understand that it was done with a purpose, and it fits in with the narrative they’re trying to tell. But I still hate it.

Another thing I hated, was the big reveal. Each movie has a final twist that shows off how Jigsaw had it all figured out from the beginning. his movie goes by the axiom if one twist is good, fifty twists will be better. The last 15 minutes of the movie is an endless parade of twists on twists. Jigsaw would have to be clairvoyant to see all these possible outcomes. It becomes cartoonishly dumb as twist is laid on top of twist.

I had a small sliver of hope for these movies. This one dashed that hope. There are seven more of these films. I don’t know how much more of this I can stand. It’s not my cup of tea. I do not recommend it. D