Guilty Pleasures: Saw VI

Can you believe they made six of these movies? Because I kind of can’t!

I cannot in good faith recommend the movie to anyone, because it wasn’t a good movie by any stretch of the imagination. You could practically see the cue cards in several of the scenes. The plot was predictable as all hell, except for the pieces you’re supposed to put together from previous Saw movies, which has grown into something labyrinthine that no one who hasn’t studied the previous five movies could possibly follow.

All that said, it was a super fun movie and I want to see it again. It was a huge step up from the previous two Saw flicks, which instead of roman numerals should have been subtitled “Bad” and “Worse”.

Really, I’m only looking for two things in my Saw movies. The first is creative and sometimes borderline-hilarious death traps. Saw VI gladly delivers. The focus of the traps this time around was less “mutilate yourself to get free” (although there was a bit of that, of course) and more “two people are caught in the same trap, and someone on the outside must decide who lives and who dies”. These types of traps play to a different part of the horror center of the brain than the standard blood’n’gore from previous movies; two doomed people pleading frantically for their lives to an outside observer is actually quite chilling. And entertaining.

The other thing I look for is the development of the overall Saw storyline which, as I said, virtually no one cares about. But I’m a hopeless nerd who is addicted to these terrible movies, so I do happen to care, and Saw VI didn’t disappoint me here either. See, the thing about the Saw series is that the overarching plotline is actually quite good. The history of Jigsaw and how he developed his twisted sense of morality, the power struggle of his inner circle, the intricate webs he weaves for his victims… it’s all very tantalizing, and a cut above what we’re typically used to seeing in slasher filims.

Part of why I didn’t like Saw V was its blatant use of a sequel hook. A character receives a box, and we are never shown what’s inside it. It turned out to be the exact thing I was expecting, and I liked the way it was used. The past few movies have been kind of meandering in circles, trying to figure out which direction they need to go. It felt like they were sorry they had killed the villain off in part three, and were trying everything to get back on track short of resorting to a necromancer bringing him back as Zombie Jigsaw. The ending of Saw VI finally gives us the transformation we’ve been needing, and going into Saw VII should be a very different beast indeed.

Thanks for the cheap thrills, Saw. See you next October.