The story this time around centers around a self-help guru that claims to be another Jigsaw survivor. Of course, he's lying (NO, THATS NOT A SPOILER!!!!! THERE IS NO SURPRISE WHEN THEY CONFIRM THIS AT THE END OF THE FILM) and soon finds himself in another of Jigsaws convoluted mazes which feels sadly familiar. No seriously, This film feels just like Saw 3 and Saw 6. What, did the film makers decide to go the safe route and rely on a tried and true formula instead of deciding to take the riskier route? Seriously disapointing, I mean this IS supposed (key word: Supposed) to be the final outing, so why not pull out all the stops and give the audience a fireworks show of an ending?
I've sat through every single Saw entry so far, and I must say that this one feels like the last entry. Why??? Well, for one the filmmakers seem tired....BORED even!!! The first 3 traps are really neat (The opening one being the best in the whole franchise I'd dare say) but the traps that come after are just plain lazy. There's one trap where the hero has to guide a friend along some planks high above the ground, one misstep and the friend gets hung. What's the gimmick??? THE FRIEND IS WEARING A BLINDFOLD! Really, filmmakers??? thats the best you could come up with here??? A BLINDFOLD??? shoot me. And the last trap is sure to piss off any Saw fan SPOILER ALERT because there is no way Jigsaw would create a trap where it is LITTERALY impossible to win. Pissed me off. Seriously though...it just seems like jigsaw had an idea who his next victim would be but never specified the traps to put him through.
Do I really have to talk about character development here???? I do??? Ok, FINE!!!!! The main hero cop in the film, Gibson (Chad Donella) is apparently brain dead. Almost everyt line and piece of delivery he has is eye-gougingly bad. There's a scene in the film where he has Jill Tuck; the widow of Jigsaw; holed up in a safehouse for protection. She tries to tell him that Hoffman (Jigsaws successor) knows where she is but he scoffs her off and says something along the lines of "THIS IS A SAFEHOUSE". Not even a minute after he says this he gets a message from Hoffman saying he knows where she is. STUPID !!!!! In fact, this film makes cops look bad. There's another scene where a bunch of cops break into the maze to save the "hero" of the film, but what do they do??? they take their time, they dick around and eventually set off a trap which kills them off. IDIOTS!!! Ok, enough ranting...let's move onto the "hero's" performance. In this film the hero/main victim is Bobby (The self-help guru, played by Sean Patrick Flannery). Amazingly he puts on a pretty good performance, succeeding in gaining the audience's sympathies. He does try a little too hard at times, which is an effort I appreciate but this film does not deserve. Jigsaws performance here is pretty cool but adds garnered disbelief on my part. he only really appears in one scene (sad misuse of Tobin Bells acting chops) and the scene he's in would appear to imply Bobby has been doing this scam since before Saw 3. The scene confused me and seemed like a cop out. The filmmakers seemed like they needed to throw one scene of Jigsaw in there and opted for a cheap, easy one that only convolutes the plot even more.
Now onto the 3D. You'd expect a movie filmed in 3D and made for 3D would be pretty cool in 3D. WRONG!!! Sure, blood splatters into the audience every now and then, yeah, pieces of traps penetrate the screen...but for the most part the filmmakers don't seem to know how to use the 3D technology to their advantage. All the 3D does here is make the film more grusome and brutal than previous ones. I was sadly disapointed...skip 3D and opt to see it in 2D instead.
In the end Saw 3D is more confusing, unnecessary, and god-awful boring (a sin!!!) than any of the previous installments. It does succeed in wrapping up the story quite nicely (Dr. Gordon reappears, his scenes were some of the only good ones in the film even though, ONCE AGAIN, his arc doesn't make sense in this one. How does a guy go from wanting to kill Jigsaw in the first Saw film to doing this in the last one???) and some of the traps are pretty cool to watch. unfortunately, Saw 3D is still more or less an overwhelming failure that is due to lazy filmmaking and total disregard for what was set up in previous films. They could have done better, but as it is....it's still bearable....barely.
2/5 stars
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