May 14, 2010: Saw VI
I’ve been a long-time proponent of the Saw series, largely because of the groundbreaking complexity of the themes explored in the first film. That examination of voyeurism and the value of life and people’s limits quite reasonably spawned a sequel to delve deeper into the motivations of the main villain, known as Jigsaw. But in this sixth entry, I can conclusively say that the series has jumped the shark.
Saw VI is reliant on the viewer having seen, and (gasp!) remembered, all of the complex minutiae and double-crosses of the preceding films, particularly the last 2 or 3 entries in which the stories have become more flashbacky and self-referential. This is because Jigsaw, the “protagonist” if you will, has been dead since the end of the third film, so while he remains prominently featured, it’s all in visions and recollections and reminders and replays of what has gone before. Actually, I don’t have a problem with this approach, and it’s not the main problem with Saw VI, since I understand that the series needs to work within some logical limitations and it would be even worse if, Jason-style (from the Friday the 13th series), Jigsaw kept inexplicably returning despite being apparently killed by the end of each movie in some suitably brutal fashion.
Indeed, there are numerous other weaknesses, such as the confusing (to me) presence of two tall dark and handsome guys who look very similar – and keep in mind that everyone typically becomes more and more bedraggled and blood-soaked as each film progresses – one of these guys is good and one of them is bad, and that’s kind of important. In addition, a police detective who was supposedly killed a few movies ago shows up here again, and her survival just happens to have been kept a secret from the “bad cop”. Betsy Russell (how many of us remember her from Tomboy in 1985?) continues to bring a reliable woodenness to her role as the late Jigsaw’s wife. And several of the character arcs, while fascinating in a comprehensive deconstructive analysis, are muddled enough as presented that their impact is largely lost. These are not minor quibbles, though not enough to bring down the movie or the series.
Where it really falls apart for me is that in the search for ever more gruesome and inventive torture porn, the Saw stories have ironically departed from the very message and inspiration that Jigsaw was trying to impart. As a man dying from cancer but surrounded by selfish and abusive people, he built arresting and imperative challenges for people to make them think about their motivations and come to appreciate life by redeeming themselves through some significant personal (usually physical) sacrifice, allowing them to go free if they were strong enough to make that sacrifice. More and more, the stories focus on one key person forced through a series of challenges in which they hold other people’s lives in their hands, and often it’s not possible for everyone to live, but rather it is required for the subject to choose who from a group will live and who will die.
Admittedly, as things have grown more complex with the inevitable revelation that Jigsaw has helpers and eventually the torch was passed along, this evolution of the games can be attributed to the assistants having a less pure motivation and losing sight of the limits to what they should be trying to do. But can we really give that much credit to the evolution of the story arc, or is it just more convenient to construct a horror film narrative with a single person going from one set-piece torture scenario to another, rather than to devise an intertwined set of challenges for a series of individuals linked by some connection beyond their knowledge, as was done in the first two films?
From a scientific/educational perspective, this film did inspire me to read about the physical properties of Hydrofluoric Acid. Pretty nasty stuff. This is an acid which can’t be stored in glass vessels, because it dissolves the glass. Needless to say, human flesh doesn’t stand up well to it.
In my view, another significant failing of Saw VI or at least a major irritation, is its focus on the troubles with the US health care system as the thread to tie together the story, with an HMO executive forced to choose who lives and who dies in the torture setups, perversely mirroring his day-to-day office life. This is an interesting approach, but I found it to be cloying and obvious, with the point having been made half an hour into the movie but then beaten into the viewer over and over again just to make sure we got it.
On the positive side, both the colour palette and the production design of Saw VI are very much like all of the previous entries, although it has morphed over the years into a calculated and stylized interpretation of the dingy, metallic and cold vision of the original film. It’s an aesthetic which has been copied by other horror films, and for good reason, since it is so evocative of dread and clinical violence, even before anything has actually happened. Also, director Kevin Greutert has been the editor for all of the previous Saw films, and his intimate familiarity with all of the earlier material allows him to keep this presentation mostly coherent, despite it being a complicated and interwoven web of characters and timelines.
Saw VI really is only for fans of the series, and it’s stretching pretty thin even for them. Will 3D help or hinder the next entry in October 2010?
Horror franchise wrapped up in itself.
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