Vaughn On Movies – The World's Toughest Movie Critic™

This year we have to deal with H1N1 (swine flu), but for the sixth consecutive year another disease has struck. It’s the cheapo attack of an independent film growing legs, giving’s birth, and biting us each Halloween.

By now, you know the synopsis. If you don’t you have no reason to see this flick because not only is it harsh to a new recruit but it has no true reward value. Still, a few sentences should kill-off your urge to see the previous entries. There is a serial killer going by the alias of Jigsaw (Tobin Bell). He hasn’t actually committed murder; instead he places victims in elaborate traps. Once inside the victims have to make some kind of sacrifice in order save their own life. This can range from killing a roommate to the amputation of a limb. Anyhow, the original killer is dead and these murders persist through the efforts of Jigsaw’s wife (Betsy Russell) and Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor).

Their reasons for carrying out these crimes are vague and unlikely. You can tell just by the real world lack of spouses picking-up where their demented husbands left off. For that matter I really don’t see the motive behind the detectives involvement, but I this is my first time with the series since the third installment. Flashbacks try to tie the new cast into the older films and hopefully few audiences view this as a brilliant move. The cops are some of the stupidest to adorn the badge. The lines and performances are mostly forgettable (a step up from the first film’s “laughable”). The story matters not. People watch a Saw to quench some thrill urge. They like seeing the traps, the screaming, the anguish.

I’ll give them credit on the entries I’d seen before this. They were getting progressively better as the budgets picked-up. However, by this point the story is a zombie capable of any direction. None of the original cast is alive. The mantel has been passed to a third party. Even the traps are running out of shock value. How many times do we need to see the use of shotguns? The editing is elliptic. During the “tense” moments, a shot isn’t sustained for more than two seconds. The camera rotates about the victim (the one on screen, not us), while low class sound effects and transitions jump through the cuts. It’s not a pretty sight. As is always the case with a Saw an unforeseen twist occurs at the end while a voiceover explains why it’s clever; but with each new installment the twist is becoming less momentous. It wouldn’t surprise me if next year’s twist is that Jigsaw has a long lost twin from Scandinavia.

The biggest problem with the Saw franchise is that no one is looking at it seriously because supply exceeds demand. Art doesn’t exceed demand. Art is rare, takes time, and has value. For one of these to be churned out on an annual basis is something unheard of in the modern era of motion pictures. It’s gotten to the point where the poster art appears to have more thought in it. With characters being added to the mix, then transplanted like a kidney into past scenes, the writers think themselves a crafty bunch—it’s a cheap ploy to breathe life into the dead, and everyone saw that. *½