Bookmonkey Saw: Day 27

Saw 3D, aka Saw VII, aka Saw: The Final Chapter

After one month, one comic, eight movies, two seasons of reality television and a video game (no luck on getting a copy of the second game to play within the time limit), I finally saw the conclusion of the Saw franchise this morning.

Saw 3D.

By the way, worst title ever - seriously, if you are going to name your films Saw, Saw II, Saw III, Saw IV, Saw V, and Saw VI, the final film should clearly be called Saw VII - if you want to cash in on the current 3D craze, you call your third film "Saw IIID" - it worked for the Friday the 13th franchise back in 1982.

Thankfully the DVD is called Saw: the Final Chapter (which still isn't as simple as "Saw VII" but, it'll have to do).

The film follows up where Saw VI left off - the new Jigsaw killer creates a new game and kills a record breaking of over 20 deaths in the film.  In the end, the story follows virtually the same plot used since the second film, doesn't really show anything new and left me disappointed overall.

I did feel pretty bad for the winner of season 2 of Scream Queens, as her scene was incredibly short and gave her virtually no chance to act at all.

I kind of feel like I just ran a marathon - a disgusting, bloody marathon.

Next up, conclusion and final thoughts.

Bookmonkey Saw: Day 23

Saw VI

All right, Saw VI, first thing first – the winner of the first season of Scream Queens appears in her breakthrough role in the first scene!  Her character and a co-worker are trapped in joined cages and can only save themselves by feeding bits of their bodies to a machine and do it faster than the other.

Yuck.

It is a big scene, and although she doesn’t get to use her skills she learned on Scream Queens to be seductive, angry or the girl who defeats the villain, she does get to look terrified and then crazy as she works to out-do her coworker.

Also, the two of them are locked up because they are bankers, and bankers are bad.  I guess because the sometimes make unfair mortgages with customers.

Actually, that might be the biggest beef I have with the sixth film, the victims are (the two previously mentioned) bankers and a whole lot of health insurance company workers.  Because those people are bad, and take advantage of the poor and sick.

Seriously, the writing at this point in the series is pretty awful and entirely inconsistent with the original concept.  Originally, the Jigsaw Killer kidnaps random people and claims they don’t appreciate their lives enough, and then he gives them a horrible decision to make and (I honestly believe) hopes that they will succeed at their challenge.

By this point in the series, only bad people are caught, people who need to be taught a lesson.  In fact, this movie actually uses retroactively continuity to show us that the Jigsaw Killer planned this all along, making the whole series about a vendetta killer, effectively removing one of my favourite aspects of the first film, the killers motive.

The "evil" health insurance company in the film is called Umbrella Health (in Saw’s equally prolific contemporary horror franchise Resident Evil, The Umbrella Corporation is behind the zombie plague which is the focus of each film), and unlike the previous films conceit of using flashbacks to describe how the victims were kidnapped, this film shows everything in chronological order.

Also this is by far the most disgusting of the films in terms of on-screen violence – I thought Saw V was bad, but this film really takes the cake (the gore-cake, if you will, which I hope isn’t an actual thing in the final Saw film).

The only positive thing I can say about the DVD is that in addition to the all the special features focusing on the horrible traps of the film (and actually, they are pretty poorly conceived in the film, most of them being shotgun traps with few of the mechanized grinding parts that seemed to appeal to fans of the previous films), was one focusing on how actor Tobin Bell worked to make his performance of the Jigsaw Killer more believable, and I found that eight minute segment to be pretty interesting.

(Quick side-note - this review of Saw VI actually marks my 500^th post to this blog since I started in August of 2009 – Pretty Cool!  Sorry it was about Saw VI, but hey – at least you didn’t have to watch it.)

Bookmonkey Saw: Day 21

Scream Queens

Part of the Saw franchise I've been most looking forward to all month is the VH1 Reality Television series Scream Queens.

The premise is pretty simple - ten young actresses compete in horror movie-themed competitions to win a role in Saw VI.

Having just watched Saw VI (more on this in my next post), I'm not sure how much of a reward that was - but what the heck, exposure is exposure and all three of the top contestants ended up getting roles in film and TV based partly on their exposure on Scream Queens.

The show has the ten contestants living in a house in California and working with judges Shawnee Smith (actress in Saw I, II, and III), writer/director James Gunn (Dawn of the Dead, Slither, Super), and acting coach John Homa.  Over the course of eight episodes they did everything from scream to fight and act scared, terrified, seductive and angry.  Honestly, an acting-themed Reality TV series felt like a lot of fun, and if I were a fan of the Saw franchise, I'd have to admit that being able to watch Reality TV and video games related to the upcoming sequel in the series would be a great way to build excitement.

Honestly, the work behind these last two posts has been some of the most fun I've had all month (since the first film, that is).

Bookmonkey Saw: Day 16

Saw V

On to the fifth Saw film now, and it begins exactly where the fourth left off – many people have died horrible deaths (again) and a plot twist has left the audience wondering exactly who is doing the killing now and why(again).

Directed by David Hackl (who was the production designer for Saw II – IV) Saw V strives to answer exactly that question, using flashbacks to the first Saw film (again) and for the first time in the series, the second film as well.  In this film the victim running through the gauntlet is once again a group (5 this time), and the story flashes between them and the parallel story of an FBI agent who found an unexpected way out of a trap and is right on the trail of the new Jigsaw Killer.

By this time in the series, much of the focus has shifted from story to the horrible death traps used by the killer, but as my interests don’t run that way, neither will my blog posts.

An interesting note my wife pointed out to me was that the heavy use of dioramas in the series (first in the original film, but most strongly in the fifth), looks an awful lot like those used by “The Miniature Killer” in the seventh season of the CBS television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation which lasted for the majority of the season and began airing about a month before the release of Saw V. 

For the next two posts I’ll be looking beyond the films, following the logic that “…if the film and television industries invest so heavily in previews, bonus materials, merchandise, and their ilk, so should we as analysts..” (Gray, 2010, p. 8). So get ready to learn about the first Saw videogame and the VH1 Reality TV series Scream Queens.

Gray, Johnathan (2010) Show Sold Separately: promos, spoilers, and other media paratexts. New York , NY : New York University Press.