Jill Tuck finally showed her true
colours, as we learn she's been fully aware of everything her
ex-husband has been up to the entire time. She hasn't been helping
him, but hasn't been trying to stop him either. She got her hands
bloody this time around, turning the tables on the maniacal Mark
Hoffman and put him in a trap she thought inescapable. Unfortunately
for her though it was, and now he likely has bloody vengeance on his
mind to go along with the remains of his face.
Here we are, at long long LONG last,
the conclusion to the Saw saga. Six films later, six films
after the first chapter gave the horror genre a much needed kick in
its arse but then caught a NASTY case of sequelitis... four times
over. Saw VI got things back on track with a refreshing blast
of originality, but unfortunately no one really saw it because A) Saw
V was an abomination that drove everyone away and B) there was a
new arse kicker in town in the form of Paranormal Activity.
Director of VI, Kevin Greutert,
sprang at the chance to direct the sequel to this young and fresh
upstart, but at the last second Lionsgate was all “Aww, HELL NO
dawg!” and used a clause in his contract to make him return for Saw
VII, or Saw 3D as it was called at this point. Greutert
was NOT pleased about this, leading to a memorable blog rant where he
wrote:
“I just had the task of telling my
83 year old mother that no, I’m not going to be allowed to direct
the movie we were all so excited about when my family last got
together, and that I’m being forced to leave town before getting a
chance to see her again. Yes, I’ll be filming people getting
tortured YET AGAIN. So we’ll have to put off me making a film she
can actually watch for another year. I’m not making this shit up.”.
Damn! Originally, Saw 3D was
not planned to be the final film in the saga, but after Saw VI
bombed at theaters they took all the ideas they had for an eighth
film and compressed it into this one because the writing was finally
on the wall for the franchise. You can only squeeze so much blood
from a stone, after all. Showing their hand again, Lionsgate moved
the American release date of the movie from October 22, 2010 (when
Paranormal Activity 2 was set to premier) to October 29, 2010
just to avoid another curb stomp of box office receipts. This was
significant because Saw movies had ALWAYS released the weekend
before Halloween, a tradition we were all very accustomed by now.
To recap we not only have a seventh
movie in as many years, a script that's a mashup of two movies, a
bitter director that does NOT want to be here, and a movie the studio
isn't confident enough to pit against a new rival. And let's not
forget this was a year after James Cameron's Avatar made 3D a
totally unnecessary movie gimmick, so they had to shoehorn that in as
well. That all sounds like a recipe for disaster, so let's get
things underway and see how it turned out with A Ghoul Versus Saw VII:
The Final Chapter In 3D!
We open where Saw I left off,
with Dr. Lawrence Gordon crawling along the floor of the factory,
leaving a bloody trail from his missing right leg. He finds a steam
pipe along the way, using it to cauterize his leg and save his life.
Inventive! We jump across town to a rare daytime shot where we see
two young men, Brad and Ryan, waking up to find themselves chained to
the opposite sides of a giant table saw. What's unusual is the table
is set up in the display window of a store, with a large crowd slowly
gathering to watch the spectacle. A curtain above them unveils the third
participant in this little game: Dina, the woman that's secretly been
dating both of them. They all start screaming for help, a woman in
the crowd taking out her phone and calling the police. Another woman
tries to break the windows with her briefcase, resulting in some of
the weakest shots this side of a WWE Divas match.
Billy the Puppet wheels in on a
tricycle, laying out the rules: it seems Dina has been making both
guys break the law to fulfill her “material needs”, so at least
there's some sort of law breaking going on here besides cheating.
Someone has to die from the saw in a minute or else they'll all die,
so the men begin battling over the blade as Dina slowly lowers
towards it. The crowd takes all this in, many pulling out their
phones to take pictures and videos which I thought was a nice touch.
Had this movie been made four years later, they all would have been
taking selfies. “Me and the guts of Jigsaw's latest victim.
LULZ!”. To their credit the police do show up pretty quickly, but
by this point Brad and Ryan have decided Dina is the one who should
die so they push the spinning blade beneath her. You can guess what
happens next. Roll the title card.
We now pick up from the last movie,
where Jill sees Half-Face Hoffman has escaped the bear trap and
begins to run for her life. She hides from him as he tries to patch
himself up, sewing his face shut. Jill makes her way to the police
station, requesting to speak to Detective Matt Gibson of Internal
Affairs. Gibson is played by Chad Donella, another veteran of
television that I'll always remember as “Bug Boy” from the
classic episode of Smallville, “Metamorphosis”. She outs
Hoffman as Jigsaw's accomplice in exchange for protection and
immunity, which he READILY agrees to.
The story switches to a talk show,
where Bobby Dagen is being interviewed about his new book
“S.U.R.V.I.V.E.: My Story Of Overcoming Jigsaw”. He is
brought to life by the superb Sean Patrick Flanery, most famous as
one of the MacManus brothers from cult classic the Boondock Saints
but has had many other great roles over his career. Dagen is one of
the few survivors of Jigsaw's twisted games, and has used that
horrific experience to turn into some kind of self-help guru.
With the glaring exception of HOW THE
FUCK the table saw trap got set up in plain view of an entire city
let alone a building full of people, I highly applaud this movie's
realism so far because that's EXACTLY what someone would do who made
it out of a trap alive. After the interview, we see Dagen's team of
agents and handlers rip him alive for giving a subpar performance
that didn't live up to their expectations. His wife Joyce, another
television veteran played by Gina Holden, is supportive of him
however so I immediately suspect her as being pure evil.
We see Jill leaving the police station,
which has now apparently transformed into a haunted police station
because it's now scary looking as fuck with creepy fog everywhere.
That's alright though, she has an army escort of police officers with
her- oh no, wait. She's completely alone. So much for that whole
“protection” thing they just established, huh? She sees a
tricycle outside near her car, so she does a 180 and runs back into
the station. Oh no, wait. She just stands there and gets captured
by Pig Mask. Wasn't she supposed to be the smart one?
She wakes up tied by her arms and legs
to a series of rails, with Hoffman setting up a giant blade that
begins gliding across the rails towards her. Sigh... remember when I
said I was applauding this movie for it's realism? Yeah, fuck that.
Why wouldn't Hoffman just kill her when she was unconscious? Hell,
why even bother kidnapping her IN PLAIN SIGHT of a police station
when he could have just stabbed her with poison, or put a bomb in her
car, or... rhaargh, whatever. It's been seven movies and I'm so very
tired. The blade cuts her clean in half,
sending her insides flying in what I bet was a REALLY shitty 3D
effect in the theaters. Oh no, wait. IT WAS ALL A FUCKING DREAM.
Oh my God, I am SO done with this movie already. They seriously just
It-Was-All-A-Dreamed us less than twenty minutes into this thing.
Normally I'd be MUCH more pissed off than I currently am, but then I
remembered how mad Greutert must have been having to film this thing
so I relaxed.
Our next victim is a man named Evan who wakes up to find himself glued into the driver seat of a car. Evan is better known
as Chester Bennington, lead singer of Michael Bay's AND Hot Topic's
favourite band Linkin Park. An 8-track (!) in the dashboard begins
to play a message from Billy, telling us he's a piece of shit racist
skinhead who leads a gang of other pieces of shit in abusing others.
We see three others are around the car, his girlfriend underneath it,
one of his friends in front of it, and the other bringing up the
rear. One disgusting chain of events later and everyone is dead, and
I'm now actively rooting for Jigsaw. Way to go movie, let's make the
victims more unlikeable than the serial killer.
Back to Dagen, who is meeting with a
support group for survivors of Jigsaw's traps that he also just
happens to be filming out of the kindness of his heart, I'm sure.
There's quite a lot of people shockingly, way more than we've seen
from any of the previous films. Sure enough, Dagen is spinning all
of their trauma as a positive experience to chance their lives until
he's interrupted by Simone, the one-armed survivor from the last
movie. She rightfully says what bullshit all of this is, and that
the only thing she learned from her forced amputation was she gets to
park in the handicap spaces at the mall now. Ha! I like her. Dagen
begins playing to the cameras like his agents wanted him to earlier
until he's interrupted again, this time by a sarcastically clapping
Dr. Gordon who calls him out on trying to profit off Jigsaw. After
the meeting Dagen runs into Pig Mask, because we all knew that was
coming.
Gibson gets called to the car trap
murder scene, his partner Detective Rogers finding a message saying
“Gibson see for yourself” right above Jill's bear trap. Dagen
wakes up in a cylindrical cage, Billy waiting for him on a
television. We learn Dagen never actually WAS in a trap, but made
the whole thing up for money and fame which is even MORE genius than
what we thought he was doing earlier. For as bad as this movie has
been overall, I do like how subtle it's being with its social
commentary compared to the last one. Remember, show don't tell! Now Dagen's going to get tested for
realsies, he has one hour to go through a series of trials to save
his wife, who is shown to be chained up in another room. Much to my
surprise, she WASN'T in on the whole scam.
Gibson brings the trap to Jill in safe
house the police are hiding her in, confronting her over neglecting
to mention she tried to kill Hoffman. I would like to point out Chad
Donella's acting here is HORRIBLE, but since I've seen him in many
other roles where he was good I'm going to chalk this up to “Greutert
didn't give a fuck”. You can just picture the director right off
camera, barely paying attention to what's going on while he sifts
through the fine print of his contract with a nearly empty bottle of
hard liquor clutched in his hand. He gets interrupted by another
detective, who has just received a letter from Hoffman addressed to
Jill with a CD inside. It's a video of Hoffman himself, having
completely abandoned the whole Billy pretense. He requests Jill in
exchange for not killing anyone else, so Gibson decides to move Jill
to the police station where she'll be much safer. Ha ha ha.
Dagen goes through his trial, each test
involving trying to save a member of his publicity team and miserably
failing. They're all horribly disgusting torture porn, because
that's EXACTLY what the series has finally become. To try to keep us
awake the film cuts to flashbacks of Dagen's rise to fame, including
a signing he does for his book where he runs into one Mr. John
Kramer. Oh hey, Tobin Bell! I forgot he was supposed to be in these
movies. This is amusing because for some reason he's wearing a
backwards baseball cap, which is just hilarious beyond hilarious and
made the first half hour totally worth sitting through.
He finally makes his way to the room
Joyce is being held in, finding her chained to a platform surrounded
by electrified wire. To save her all he has to do is recreate the
trap he claimed to survive, which involves shoving hooks into his
chest and climbing up to a circuit to deactivate her trap. While this is going on, the movie's
other plot involves Hoffman pulling a whole bunch of tricks to sneak
his way into the police station by switching places with one of the
dead skinheads in a body bag. To hedge his bets, he lures Gibson
into a trap that results in the officer's death at the barrel of an
automated gun turret. Sure, why not? Saw's always been about
automated gun turrets!
This part of the movie is pure slasher
film, Hoffman stalking his way through the station and stabbing
people in the throat one by one. Remember once upon a time when
Gordon and Adam were locked in a bathroom in a thrilling game of
wits? I don't. He stabs his way down to the holding cells where
Jill is being held, shooting Rogers in the eye in what is another
incredibly awful looking 3D shot. He then shoots Jill through the
bars and escapes to begin a new life. Oh wait, no. OF COURSE he
unlocks her cell to kill her with his bare hands, but luckily she
JUST HAPPENS to have a nail file on her and stabs HIM in the neck.
She takes off running, with Jason or Michael Myers or Ghostface in
pursuit. I'm honestly not sure what movie I'm watching right now.
Dagen fails again, as the hooks rip
through his skin and he falls back to the floor. The timer runs out
and Joyce's platform transforms into a giant metal cooker, fire
erupting to roast her alive. Well, THAT escalated quickly. I'd
point out that Joyce is literally the most innocent victim yet, but
since I'm not even sure who set this trap I'll save my complaints for
later. I mean, it can't be Hoffman right? Who could it be? Also,
if you're keeping track, this completely ends Dagen's arc: watching
his wife burn alive in graphic detail. This had ABSOLUTELY no effect
on the main plot, and is 100% filler for a story that is already
paper thin. I hope Greutert at least got a nice check out of all
this, although I bet Lionsgate put something really nasty on the memo
line.
Hoffman tracks down Joyce, beats the
shit out of her, and straps her to a chair instead of killing her
because that's just not good enough. This is the final movie, we
gotta go out in style! He goes into the evidence room where the bear
trap is, but JUST HAPPENS to find Amanda's original bear trap sitting
next to it. He attaches it to her head as the traditional Saw Ending
Montage begins playing, showing John and Jill in happier times. The
trap rips her face off- ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! Jill better
wake up again or else- nope. She's dead. WOW. You know... Jill was
basically the HERO of this movie, right? Yes an extremely gray area
one, but ultimately she was trying to do the right thing and bring
Hoffman to justice.
This entire movie was some kind of
fucked up subversion of every 1980s slasher film: you have the
heroine scared of the immortal slasher, doing everything in her power
to stop him. You even had the fakeout dream sequence where he kills
her, just to reflect the doom that he represents. She spends the
whole movie trying to survive him, even doing the “running from the
slow moving monster stalking her with a knife” thing. And it just
ends with her getting brutally murdered completely unceremoniously?!
HOLY SHIT this movie is a middle finger to all of us.
Hoffman quips the movie catchphrase and
leaves the station, returning to his base of operations to burn it to
the ground. As he leaves he gets jumped by... three Pig Masks?! One
unmasks to reveal himself as... wait for it... DOCTOR LAWRENCE
GORDON! Oh, this wasn't a surprise at all, you say? Showing Gordon
earlier being so ominous that the only way they could have ruined
this reveal harder was if they had him holding a “I'm the new
Jigsaw!” sign ruined it for you? Wait, what's that? Having Jill
deliver the envelope to the hospital in the last movie telegraphed
this reveal for you as well? Yeah, me too.
Click here for Part 2!
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