Day 024 || Saw VI

Saw VI, 2009

Dir. Kevin Greutert

"You think it's the living who will have ultimate judgement on your, because the dead will have no claim on your soul. But you may be mistaken."

Unlike my previous review for Whip It, I don't really feel a long-winded review is necessary here. Saw VI is the next film in a series that has been struggling to get it's bearings after the third one killed off the main antagonist in a brilliant ending that had me wondering where the series was heading, and what I could expect. Well three years  ago, if I knew this was what I could expect, well I'd be disappointed to say the least.

Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) is still present in overly long and unnecessary flashbacks, but the main villain is still the same boring, corrupted police detective we've seen in Saw IV and V. In all honesty, I've never really liked this character, and his place as the new Jigsaw seems forced, and uninspired at best. Even after three films I don't care about him, which makes one of the big twists in Saw VI fall even harder on it's metaphorical face.

Along with a mediocre villain, we also get trite and uncreative traps, something the Saw series is known for. Instead of putting thought into elaborate traps and twists, instead the writers focus on melodrama between characters who haven't been a part of this series for a few films. Is it really necessary to show Flashbacks to events that occurred during and before the third installment? The reason we killed off these characters in Saw III was to get a fresh start and take the series into a new and interesting direction.

Clearly when Bousman (the previous director and creative head of the series for II and III) left, he took with him the spirit, energy, and creativity of these films. Every installment after III has become more and more average, leaving us with a hollow shell of a once promising series. Saw VI is terribly mediocre and what's worse is that you can see an interesting idea left to rot. Saw VI's take on the Health Care and Insurance industries could have made for a clever and horrific look at an industry that somewhat parallels some of the ideologies that Saw has covered in the past. Instead we get rudimentary torture porn and an in your face flashback where Jigsaw is on a soapbox decrying the fouls of the insurance industry.

But as much as I just didn't care for this film, and in large don't care about the series, it's not offensively bad (ala Paper Heart). I wasn't angry and I didn't feel like I wasted the 80 minutes (of which 20 minutes are dedicated to flashbacks, most of which we've already seen). It's just disappointing to see a series I was once invested in have dwindled into such a mindless and lame excuse for a horror/suspense film.

2 out of 5