Going into the third installment of the Saw franchise, I had my doubts.  The sequel didn't live up to my expectations, and it seemed to ruin the message from the first film.  The gore and games were taken up a notch, and the plot pretty much took a back seat, save for a few elements. Then, a WEEK after seeing Saw II, I read that a second sequel was being produced and would be released within a year.  Needless to say I felt that it was too fast, and would be a poor quality film, with the gore and the insanity taken to a ridiculous degree ? which would render the whole series laughable.  I was proven very wrong. 

Let me just say right off: this movie is FUCKING BRUTAL.  There’s no other way to say it. It’s unrelenting in its mean-spiritedness.  There is so much gore in this movie, and so many intense scenes, I almost couldn't take it.  A few torture scenes run for fifteen minutes or more, and I actually found myself wishing they would stop.  I've never experienced that before.  We have things like: a foot being broken with a rock, a live person chained to a device which slowly twists his bones until they each break, and, I won’t even say anymore specific scenes.  It's honestly the most violently sadistic movie I’ve ever seen. It really makes me question myself, because I enjoyed it immensely. 

The plot is simpler than the first sequel: Jigsaw has escaped with Amanda, they are hiding out in an old abandoned warehouse.  Amanda has kidnapped Doctor Lynn Denlon (Bahar Soomekh, Crash), a woman who ignores her husband, pops anti-depressants and basically is no longer really living at all, and tells her that she must keep an almost-dead Jigsaw alive until his game with another person is finished or she will die upon his death.

Jeff (Angus Macfayden) is the other person.  Carrying the weight of anger over the loss of his son in a car accident some months before, he is now forced by Jigsaw to run a gauntlet of those directly involved in either the accident itself or the trial that followed.  He is given the task of deciding whether to forgive each person and free them from their "game" or let them die for what they did to him. 

Saw III has a lot to say about grief, about forgiveness, and about vengeance ? and there's a lot it doesn't say, it seems to refuse, in order to make people reach their own conclusions.  That, to me, was one of the most interesting aspects of this film.  Jeff’s "game" was intriguing and thoughtful, although somewhat tough to watch.  Forced to experience a resurgence of grief and sadness, Jeff is close to spiraling out of control at each turn. Angus Macfayden puts in a great performance here, he’s given quite a bit of material and he does extremely well. 

POSSIBLE SPOILER BELOW:

Amanda is back, again, this time as Jigsaw’s assistant. Shawnee Smith provides another good performance.  She's a truly underrated actress and proves it in this film.  Leigh Whannell wrote the screenplay again, giving her character a lot of depth and backstory.  We discover much about her relationship with John (er, Jigsaw) and are provided insight into her psyche. 

END OF SPOILERS.

Bahar Soomekh also gives an awesome performance as the doctor who must save Jigsaw's life.  Her character is understated and quiet, but she can convey a lot of emotions easily regardless of her lack of enough dialogue.  I really felt that she was believable, both in her depressed attitude, and even during a few awkward moments when the script called for her character to do something that seemed far-fetched. 

Whannell's screenplay is probably the best one yet for the Saw franchise.  It’s intense, thoughtful, creepy, intelligent, and doesn't leave any possibility for plot holes.  In fact, most of the plot holes in the earlier films are explained, finally, as is the awkward twist ending of the second film.  With its subtlety and intelligence, it proves to be the most engaging screenplay yet. It doesn't rely on cheap one-liners or clichéd dialogue in order to keep the plot going, instead assuming that its audience is actually smart enough to understand it without all that.  This may or may not be because Darren Lynn Bousman, the director for the two sequels, had nothing to do with writing it this time, it's written solely by the original’s writer, Whannell. 

Of course, there is a series of twist endings.  That is to be expected at this point.  I actually found myself thinking it would have been more of a twist to actually end the movie the way it seemed to be headed. That didn’t happen.  Thankfully. This twist ending, in keeping with the utter brutality and sadism of the film, is sick.  I'm a fan of "bad endings", endings in which terrible things happen, and I thought I had seen some pretty screwed up endings (Requiem for a Dream comes to mind) but this definitely is deeply terrible.  I haven’t walked out of a movie thinking "Wow that was just WRONG" in a long time. And maybe this makes me a bad person, but I was glad.

Everything in this movie is tied up.  There seem to be no more loose ends and any questions the viewer might have had from the previous movies have been answered.  I came away from Saw III thinking that it was done and there should not be anymore sequels, so it's slightly irritating to read that there are already rumors of another one.  Without revealing anything, (trust me this will reveal a lot less than you think) nothing is left of this series, there’s nowhere to take it now.  It’s done.  And if they end it here, it will have ended on a GREAT and thoughtful note. 

One last thing, I saw this movie with a friend. He jokingly asked me if I was scared to go home, because I thought the killer from the movie would "get me."  I thought about this after I left and came up with an answer: the Saw movies aren’t scary in the way that makes you check behind your shower curtain, or in the back seat of your car.  They are worse, because there’s nothing you can uncover that you can see.  These movies make you think, about yourself, about your life, about how you REALLY feel about other people, and what you would really do if you were given a choice: to forgive or not to forgive, to die or to let someone else die.  That’s what scared me tonight: I didn’t want to go home and face my own thoughts, because THOSE are what are really terrifying.