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Printer-Friendly ModeSaw it before
October 26, 2009 —
Ah ... October.
The changing of the seasons brings with it many beloved traditions. A weekend escape for a fall color tour up north. Watching baseball playoffs with friends. Carving jack-o-lanterns with the family.
And of course, paying to see movie characters get slashed, burned, mutilated, disemboweled, garroted, decapitated, hanged, exploded, crushed ... and this year, even liquified.
I don’t think I’m throwing out any spoilers when I tell you that that’s what’s in store for you if you buy a ticket for Saw VI.
If you’re a fan, you know what to expect; if you’re new to the franchise, well, there’s really no reason to start now.
The latest entry in the series picks up right where Saw V left off. Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) has just eliminated his enemy, Detective Strahm, in an industrial trash compactor.
He is preparing new victims in accordance with Jigsaw’s (Tobin Bell) will, a series of mysterious numbered dossiers left in an antique box.
Meanwhile the FBI is hot on the killer’s trail, and time is running out for Hoffman. What’s worse, there now is a plucky reporter on the scene, a “sensationalist” whose stories Hoffman feels do him no justice.
Hoffman must walk a dangerous tightrope between the feds, the media and Jigsaw’s widow, a woman who will stop at nothing to ... oh, forget it.
Look, nobody who is excited to see this movie cares about the plot, which is as convoluted as a soap opera and yet fully explained to the audience a number of times to ensure that no one gets lost.
There is a reason this banal horror sub-genre is called “torture porn.” Like its namesake, plot — if any — is an afterthought.
They point of both is no more than to show the audience visceral displays of human flesh. The difference here is you see actual viscera.
Apparently there is a mainstream audience for this; Saw movies routinely gross $60 million-plus and the franchise is one of the most profitable of all time.
This makes me wonder why large-scale slaughterhouse firms have not yet discovered the income potential of offering tours and open houses.
Despite the bad writing and directing there is some quality acting in Saw VI. But it is disappointing to see fine character actors such as Bell and Mandylor wasted in this abattoir of a movie.
For example, here is a sample of the snappy dialogue between Hoffman and a colleague:
-- Flatly. You’re alive.
-- Flatly. Yes.
-- Flatly. You let me think you were dead.
-- Flatly. I didn’t know who else I could trust.
It’s too bad that David Caruso (CSI: Miami) already made a comeback from the exploitation flick ghetto, because Hoffman may be the part he was born to play.
Bell is the cast’s bright spot — or more correctly, least-dark spot. The director (Kevin Greutert) lets him ham it up a bit, careening between wild overreactions and gravelly whispers.
Still, the lack of narrative or tonal variation, and the relentless grind of the gore, make this a hard slog for the unconverted.
And worse than the directing or writing, worse than the pseudo-industrial soundtrack or the plagiaristic set design (it looks like an Emerson, Lake, and Palmer record sleeve), worse even than the utter implausibility of the Rube Goldberg torture machines, is the philosophical bankruptcy of the filmmakers’ moral theory.
Saw’s creators try to convince us that we are all utterly malicious at the deepest level, and that it only takes the right circumstances, the right dilemma, to bring us to our evil and debased true natures.
If you disagree, stay far away from the theater this weekend.
And if you agree, it’s the best time of the year to get in touch with your inner Torquemada.