After the release of Saw II, the franchise had proven itself to be highly profitable for the studio, Lionsgate. Made on a production of $4 million, the film brought in $159 million worldwide. Another sequel was an inevitability, but where do you go when your main villain is dying of cancer? Simple.
You go off the rails.
Saw III is nothing if not berserk. Flashbacks occur like clockwork. Characters from previous films make appearances here. Yeah, even the dead ones. The backstory is slathered on like jam on a peanut butter sandwich. Saw III is a dense film, filled with madness and grue, but it latches on to story elements from Saw II and creates something fantastic and sprawling.
John Kramer/Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) is on the way out. His cancer has spread and he has become bedridden. Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith), Kramer’s protege, has relocated her mentor to an abandoned meatpacking plant. There, she has done her best to take care of him. Medical instruments lie around his hospital bed. Monitors chirp and hum. Although vulnerable and weak, Kramer’s physical condition has not stopped one thing. A complicated game has begun.
Amanda has kidnapped Dr. Lynn Denlon (Bahar Soomekh) in the hopes she can keep Kramer alive. There’s a catch, though. There is always a catch in Saw movies. To ensure her participation, Denlon is trapped in a collar loaded with shotgun shells. That collar is electronically connected to Kramer’s heart monitor. If he dies, so does she.
Denlon is ordered to help Kramer survive until another person makes it through their test. Jeff (Angus Macfadyen) has become an abusive bitter man after his young son was hit by a car and killed. Jeff’s tests revolve around his ability to forgive those responsible for the loss of his son.
In the outside world, another game is happening, but it is different than the ones Jigsaw has enacted in the past. Kerry (Dina Meyer) from Saw II realizes that while people would be able to escape Jigsaw’s usual contraptions, that’s not the case with the latest one. Even if one followed all the rules and wrenched themselves free, there would be no way to exit the room. Why would Jigsaw suddenly run games no one can win?
Mysteries abound in Saw III, and there are no simple answers.
Bits of Kramer’s life are parsed out in almost subliminal imagery. In Saw III, we learn about his failed attempt at unaliving himself. We also see our first glimpses of his wife, Jill (Betsy Russell). There’s the hint that Kramer was someone with a normal life, someone of substance before he became the Bitchfinder General. That makes the human he has become more understandable. How badly do you want to be on the side of someone with so much metaphorical blood on his hands?
Kramer isn’t the only mastermind in Saw III. For the first time, Amanda gets to run a game on her own, with her own rules and devices she built. As Amanda becomes the catalyst for the action in Saw III, so does Saw III become Shawnee Smith’s movie. She storms around the makeshift hospital room, constantly on the verge of both tears and insanity. It’s a great performance and Smith easily steals the movie.
Kramer is bedridden for the duration of Saw III, allowing Tobin Bell to do nothing but glower and intone cryptic warnings. Hapless test subject Jeff is the worst character in the series. Macfadyen plays him as bland, whiny, and shrill, mistaking raising his voice for emotion. It isn’t that you don’t want Jeff to survive the game. You just don’t care if he does.
Saw III sees Kramer pass the torch to Amanda, who is expected to carry out the work of Jigsaw after John dies. Amanda’s problem isn’t a weak will or proclivity toward regret. Her story is one of power and how to use it badly. Her tests are unable to be passed, disallowing any sort of redemption for her subjects. Amanda becomes like an assistant manager who gets promoted, and then starts denying vacation days for her employees. Therein lies the lesson of Saw III.
Be fair. Remain even-keeled. Give everyone a chance. To paraphrase Seth Gecko in From Dusk Till Dawn, you can be an asshole. Just don’t be a fuckin’ asshole.
As Amanda’s story, Saw III enters a new phase of grimness and despair. Yet, it is strangely emotional. As dysfunctional and symbiotic as it may be, Amanda’s relationship with John Kramer is touching. That’s not to say Saw III is a demented Hallmark movie. Any film where someone is covered with the juice of liquefied pigs isn’t exactly heartwarming.
Nonetheless, Saw III is the perfect, logical ending for what would have been a fine trilogy. Strictly from a story sense, there was no need to continue the Saw series. The franchise could have ended here.
It didn’t.
