Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on January 19, 2007, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
Am I the first one to notice, or just the first one I know of to ask, how Saw III lost its teeth? I’m not talking figuratively, but rather noting that despite the extracted-tooth imagery that suffused Lionsgate’s theatrical advertising and promotional campaign (I think I still have that branded dental floss around here somewhere…) and continues into the menus on the company’s DVD, the movie itself is completely lacking in dental mayhem.
And now come the disc commentaries and featurettes to explain why: Originally, the film’s initial victim—the guy with all the chains embedded in his flesh—was also supposed to have them piercing his pearly whites as well, requiring him to yank them out to free himself. Once it was determined that staging this particular bit of nastiness couldn’t be practically accomplished, however, the marketing department was already well into making it their central theme. Such are the perils of hurrying a sequel toward a release date just a year after the previous film dictated its existence in the first place.
Saw III doesn’t suffer from the rushed feel of many such follow-ups, but it does carry the sense of a well returned to once too often. By this point in a franchise with such specific motifs, and having expanded the roster of victims in Saw II, there wasn’t much the creators could do to top the previous films but to up the ante in the two areas that have won the series its following: the sadistic traps and the surprise endings. Thus, instead of one concluding stunner to knock audiences out of their seats, Saw III hits us with three or four twists, none as clever as their predecessors and cumulatively amounting to overkill. Similarly, the death machines have been conceived in grandiosely grotesque terms, to the point where watching them in action becomes more unpleasant than actually scary. And the problem I’ve had with these movies from the beginning—the plausibility gap between the traps’ complexity and Jigsaw’s apparent ability to construct them—just gets ridiculous this time out. Seriously, are we expected to believe that a cancer-ridden invalid and an ex-junkie could put together a series of murder chambers that would seem to require Department of Defense-level financing and manpower?
A couple of these setpieces were cannily conceived in terms of MPAA anticipation: They contain little actual gore that the ratings board might object to, while the bloodiest setpiece, the extended brain surgery on Jigsaw, doesn’t feature anyone getting hurt. Indeed, we learn from the disc’s supplements that the operation raised no objections, though a number of other scenes wound up getting significantly trimmed. All that footage has been restored to the unrated DVD, making these sequences even harder to watch. Those for whom torture footage is the be-all and end-all of the horror experience will groove on them, but despite director Darren Lynn Bousman and scripter Leigh Whannell’s valiant attempts to ground it all in emotional territory, the human factor just doesn’t come off this time. The characters and their dilemmas don’t register as they should, and the movie keeps breaking into the main action to flash back to the prior exploits of Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) and his “apprentice” Amanda (Shawnee Smith). Paradoxically, some of the restagings of scenes from the first and second Saws are among III’s most effective bits; you know a sequel has problems when its best moments are those directly lifted/adapted from its predecessors.
The overcomplication that informs Saw III extends to the DVD’s supplements as well, though overall, they’re more satisfying than the feature itself. But even in a three-quel, was it really necessary to have a trio of audio commentaries? Easily the best is the first, in which Bousman and Whannell are joined by Lionsgate executives Peter Block and Jason Constantine (alternating in what they call “tag-team” contributions). Practically everything you could want to know about the movie is covered here, with special attention given to the many edits required by both the MPAA and storytelling concerns (there was a great deal of reorganizing where the flashbacks were concerned). The writer and director talk in depth about the characters, their motivation and evolution through the storyline, while also providing aesthetic and anecdotal details about specific scenes (Bousman insists that the freezer setpiece was made less sexual by having the female victim completely nude, and reveals that it was actually uncomfortably hot on that set). Most impressively, we learn that the onscreen transitions from one location to another were actually done in-camera via adjoining sets, rather than through digital trickery.
The second and third commentaries really should have been combined into one; the track with Bousman, cinematographer David A. Armstrong and editor Kevin Greutert in particular covers a lot of repeated ground from the first one. And given that we’re told this is the first commentary that Armstrong, who provided all three Saws their distinctive looks, has done for the series, there’s disappointingly little detail about his visual approach; we actually learn just as much, if not more, about the production design here. On their own track, producers Oren Koules and Mark Burg have a number of unique stories to tell, though they sometimes fall into the too-common trap of simply relating what’s on screen. Their best observation comes at the beginning, when they opine that Saw III might have gotten away with so much in its R-rated cut because the MPAA is really sharpening its knives for Hostel: Part II!
Featurettes covering The Traps and The Props of Saw III provide interesting peeks at the technical side of the movie’s grotesqueries, and there’s a brief but entertaining “video diary” by Bousman. Given the amount of deleted footage mentioned in the commentaries (there are endless jokes about an eventual multidisc special edition reinstating it all), it’s a tad disappointing that only two such scenes are included here, though it is interesting to see the raw footage with untreated colors, prior to the postproduction that gave the final movie its trademark sickly hues.
Those visuals are replicated very well in the DVD’s 1.78:1 transfer, backed by aggressive Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. So what’s missing? Well, given how the creators emphasize that it’s the characters who really drive the movie, it’s strange that the actors are almost wholly absent from the supplemental package. Only heroine Bahar Soomekh gets any face time, and that’s to recall the experience of bonesawing her way into Jigsaw’s cranial prosthetic. If that second special edition of Saw III actually does emerge (and given the franchise’s disc history, it’s very likely it will), here’s hoping the performers get as much of a say as those who staged their torture and demises.
