Saw VI

Holy cow! It's an honest-to-goodness one-off I-watched-this-on-DVD movie review. Vintage Back-Blogged, no? I haven't done this since March! In order to mark the occasion, I'm going to do something I don't think I've ever done in a few hundred movie posts on the blog - I'm going to live-blog this whole goddamn movie. It's ninety minutes long and probably sucks. Why not?

1:20 - We open on a woman whose head is stuck in some sort of vice grip. There's a dude in the same room with her in the same situation. Feels like we've seen this one before...

2:30 - Ah, these are predatory bankers! So says Jigsaw. He only tortures people who deserve it, after all.

3:30 - Okay, so only one of them gets to live, and it's going to be the one who cuts off the most of their own flesh. This is straight out of Seven, right down to the fat guy cutting chunks out of his own stomach. Isn't the fat guy at an unfair advantage here?

4:50 - The girl is just hacking off an arm. Smart! She can't get through the bone, though - NEVER MIND, here comes the cleaver!

5:30 - So many gratuitous cleaver hacks!

6:00 - No surprise here - arm gets the win, down goes the fat man, and here come the opening titles. Welcome to Saw VI everybody!

6:40 - I think we're recapping previous entries in the series now, which is good, as I've totally forgotten most of what happened in Saw IV and Saw V. This franchise has always at least pretended to have some sort of overarching linear story, which is hilarious since Jigsaw died in the third movie of seven total.

8:30 - We're in some health insurance office building. Some high-powered hot shot isn't going to make it home for his wife's birthday. BET HE'S GONNA REGRET THIS DECISION.

10:00 - Looks like our big wig health insurance asshole is a true monster - in a flashback, he's denying coverage to some guy with heart disease who failed to disclose an oral surgery from thirty years ago. Poor bastard is actually screaming, verbatim, "I HAVE A FAMILY!"

11:40 - Holy shit, is that Bryan Cranston?

12:00 - No, of course not.

12:50 - The grizzly aftermath of the opening scene is on display here, and Agent Hoffman is investigating. I just paused the movie to remind myself who Hoffman is, and apparently he's Jigsaw's apprentice. Did he set this trap?

14:10 - Another quick flashback confirms that Hoffman was indeed Jigsaw's apprentice, and that he tried to kill his partner, Perez. But here's Perez, back on the job! Awkward? Only for Hoffman, it seems.

15:30 - Now there's a conversation about Jigsaw leaving behind a mysterious box for his... wife? lover? Not all of this is coming back to me.

16:30 - Here's the newly one-armed survivor of the first trap, being interviewed by Hoffman, appearing strangely remorseful for ruining borrowers' lives with bad loans. Nice work, Hoffman! She learned.

17:40 - Okay yeah, here's Jigsaw's baby mama. Or would-be baby mama, except she miscarried, as we learned in the fourth film, when some asshole slammed a swinging door open right into her uterus.

19:10 - So much recapping. I'm honestly grateful.

19:40 - Lots of gratuitous shots of knives slicing jigsaw puzzle piece shapes out of dead people. Living people? Yeesh, maybe. Point is, dead fat banker has a puzzle piece chunk missing from him, but the coroners can tell that the knife used to remove it was serrated, where all of Jigsaw's previous victims have had precise surgical knives used on them. Relevant? I doubt it, but let's wait and see.

22:00 - Things are icy between Jigsaw's widow and Hoffman. Does she know who he is? He must know who she is, right?

23:10 - Here's a flashback of Jigsaw screaming at his lady about how too many people mistreat her.

23:50 - Oh right, Amanda. Jigsaw's last apprentice. She's long dead, I'm pretty sure.

24:40 - We're back on the health insurance agent, sitting alone in his office on a dark and stormy night.

25:10 - Oh did the power just go out? YOU BET the power just went out.

26:00 - He takes a shot at a hooded figure and seems to hit him! Walk up, pull down the hood to reveal... a security guard? Wrong guy, asshole.

26:20 - And sure enough, a previously unseen guy nabs him from behind. SHOULDA GONE HOME FOR YOUR WIFE'S BIRTHDAY, FUCKO!

26:30 - Smash cut, flood lights, respirator of some kind. IT'S A TRAP! Obviously.

26:50 - "Hello, William..." Ah, so his name is William. Jigsaw is upset that William's company's policies don't exist to benefit the sick people who need them. Pretty topical for a 2009 release, pre-Obamacare and all.

27:40 - William is tied up to a rack by each of his four limbs, each of which also has a bomb strapped to it. He's got a whole hour to escape this predicament, though the details are admittedly ambiguous.

28:20 - Here are two other people in another room, absolutely confused, watching William slail about on a video feed.

29:00 - Test one! Here's a chain smoker, tied up in the same spot. Every time William or the chain smoker breathers, a vice closes in around their ribcages. Last one standing wins. Can William hold his breath longer than a chain smoker?

31:00 - Of course he can! Was that supposed to be suspenseful? Chain smoker coughs up blood on his way out, and possibly some bone shards too. Neat!

32:00 - But wait, didn't that last test kind of prove that Jigsaw also doesn't care about people in poor health when they've put themselves in that predicament? That's kind of what he was yelling at his not-wife about, I think. What's the moral here? Jigsaw hates the self-destructive infirm, while also hating those who would deny them healthcare?

33:10 - Oh shit, the two people in the other room are William's wife and son. Happy birthday, baby!

35:00 - And now a hooded figure grabs Jigsaw's widow out of an apartment complex.

35:50 - She WAS his wife. And her name is Jill. Thanks, flashback!

36:20 - Okay, looks like William and Jigsaw have met before. Jigsaw is lecturing William on "the will to live." Snap back to the present, and William seems to understand what's going on.

37:20 - How many sprawling, dank, dingy basement labyrinths does Jigsaw have access to?

38:30 - Test two for William! He now has to choose which of his colleagues - each tied up and gagged and dangling from a chain - to save. The young man with no one who loves him, or the sickly middle-aged woman with a nice family? I'm guessing he saves the young guy here, because the theme of this movie seems to be "fuck sick people."

40:30 - NOPE! Sorry, YOUNG WHITE SINGLE DUDE. Maybe next time you'll think twice about checking your privilege, or something.

40:40 - Well, this is something. My DVD, fresh out of the case an hour ago, is having playback issues. No scratches visible on the disc. Why did I ever invest so thoroughly in these plastic circular pieces of garbage?

40:40 - Maybe it's a PS3 issue. Time to try this thing on the Xbox One Keith let me borrow. This is literally the first non-Destiny disc that's been in here since May.

40:40 - Ha! Of course you can't just play a DVD on the Xbox One! Now downloading the "Blu-ray Player" app...

40:50 - And we're back. Somehow the DVD menus load slower on the Xbox One than they did on the PS3, but I can't complain because the Xbox One is actually working... for now.

41:30 - Back to William's wife and kid, trying to figure out how to escape from their own cell. Their only tool seems to be a giant vat of acid.

43:00 - INTERESTING! On the other side of the door, in another cell, is Jill. And Hoffman looks on from behind a mirror... what's the endgame here, pal?

43:20 - Hang on, they just called Jill "Pam." There's a chance I've mistaken a few identities here.

43:40 - Yeah, okay, there's Jill, walking around in a hospital with a key around her neck and some files tucked under her arm. Who's Pam? No idea, but certainly the one who got kidnapped eight minutes ago.

44:00 - And... we're frozen again. Fuck this. Time to try the laptop in a last-ditch effort.

44:00 - No dice.

44:00 - I am now watching this movie online, probably illegally, although given my situation, I have no remorse whatsoever. This isn't stealing; this is circumventing a fatal flaw in a legally purchased product.

44:00 - Buffering...

44:00 - It's been an hour and a half since I started watching this. I honestly thought I'd be done by now. Silly me.

44:00 - Man, the second half of this movie better be worth it.

44:10 - Okay! We're back. And there's a bathtub with a dead black guy in it. Oh, because it's the black guy from Saw III who was killed, and this is another flashback. Of course. Because how else can Jigsaw keep shoing up in these movies when he's been dead for three of them by now?

45:00 - Hoffman, in the flashback, is arguing with Amanda. "I don't need a test," he says, referring to his own preference not to ever be put into one of Jigsaw's death traps. Something tells me Hoffman's gonna get his soon enough.

47:30 - Same flashback, and here's Jigsaw giving Jill the key. "When the time is right... you'll know what to do." Oh, Jigsaw, you clever minx!

48:10 - Back in the present now, here's William making his way through a piping hot boiler room. Don't touch the walls, Will!

48:40 - A-ha! Flashbackto Jigsaw, dying from cancer, requesting medical coverage from William. GUESS HOW THIS ONE GOES, GUYS!

50:30 - On his way out the door, a rejected Jigsaw spits some knowledge about Eastern medical practices. 'They pay pay their doctors when they're healthy... and not when they're sick. We got it all ass-backwards." You tell 'em, Jigsaw. And then go on and design another torture porn murder game where a dozen people die.

51:10 - Jigsaw stops to admire a piranha in a fishtank. "Pi-RAN-ha..." Really looking for filler in an hour-and-a-half movie, I guess.

52:20 - Oh, William - it's getting HOT IH HERE! Okay, so in this test, William's lawyer needs to walk through this HOT HOT HOT maze in ninety seconds or she's dead as shit.

54:30 - William gets to turn hot ass steam vents on and off for his lawyer, scalding his hands in the process. This seems like a really fun co-op puzzle!

55:30 - Been way more than ninety seconds, just saying.

55:40 - William just can't hang onto this steam vent valve, and DOWN GOES DEBBY! The lawyer. The lawyer's name was Debby.

55:50 - What's this? Debby makes it through! And now she just needs to find a key in order to unlock herself from her own death trap collar-thing. And here's a picture of an X-ray that seems to suggest the key is hiding in William's belly. And lo, here's a chainsaw. AND HERE COMES DEBBY! Swing away, Debby!

56:30 - Debby lands a good old fashioned kick in the nuts, but still can't manage to connect with the chainsaw.

57:00 - Yeah, like, four and a half minutes into her ninety second countdown, Debby loses. How in the fuck was she supposed to get the key out of William and then use it just ninety seconds? And did William not just fail his test? Guess not.

58:00 - Back to Pamela, sitting in her cage. And there's William's family, sitting in the other one. Ooh, prediction. William is totally fucking Pamela in the side, and now he's going to have to choose between her and his family in his final test. That's gotta be it, right?

58:20 - Here's Hoffman, back at HQ. They've set up a voice unscrambler thing in order to unscramble Jigsaw's voice on the latest video tapes. Oh Hoffman, things aren't looking good for you, pal!

1:00:00 - Meanwhile, Jill continues to grab pieces of paper and put them in her manilla envelope. Could it be that the "time" is "right?" Might Jill... "know" what to "do?"

1:00:50 - William's final test... and it's six of his colleagues chained to a spinning merry-go-round playground thing! I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that nobody survives this one...

1:01:40 - Jigsaw's video claims that William can save two - his choice! The mechanism of this trap involves a gun with six rounds in it that fires automatically. Presumably, William can let two people free by pressing some corresponding buttons before the gun goes off.

1:03:20 - Looks like each of the six get to plead their case. First guy's up. He doesn't have much to offer beyond "PLEASE!" and "PRESS THE BUTTON!" Gonna take more than that, son. BOOM, HEADSHOT, five remain.

1:03:40 - "I'm strong!" "I'm healthy!" "I have two kids!" "My parents are sick!" "I'm pregnant!" "She's lying!" There are some interesting utilitarian aspects riding on this one, but before we have time to explore them, BLAMMO! Another one bites the dust.

1:05:20 - William saves a young and attractive woman by pushing the button. Doing so sends spikes through his hands. Yeouch!

1:05:30 - The black guy never stood a chance.

1:06:10 - Okay, three dead, one "saved," two shots left. We've come down to Sweater Vest Nerd and Cleavage Blonde. We all know how this one's gonna turn out.

1:06:50 - Poor Sweater Vest Nerd. He knows what's coming. And he has some WORDS for William.

1:07:20 - Sweater Vest Nerd was the best character in this movie. He spat cold hard truths about sexism that William just wasn't ready to hear.

1:08:00 - William's got fourteen more minutes to save his family. He limps through the next door. It isn't really clear what constitutes "passing" or "failing" any of these tests. He's encountered ten of his employees at this point and saved three of them, out of what seems like a possible four. Is any of this meaningful? Will his choices end up biting him in the ass? Perhaps saving him?

1:08:10 - The door said "zoo maintenance area" - so they've been in a zoo this whole time? How? It's underground and dark and dingy and shitty. There are also no animals to be seen. This was the shittiest and most depressing zoo in the world even before it became the set of the latest Jigsaw snuff film.

1:08:40 - Back at the station, they're zeroing in on unmasking Jigsaw's voice. Hoffman, buddy - you're boned. (And he knows it!)

1:09:50 - By the way, this technology - much like the "zoom in and resolve the blur into a high resolution photo" technology on CBS procedurals - is, of course, pretend.

1:10:20 - HO-LEE SHIT, Hoffman wastes no time, knifing the fuck right out of his own supervisor. Hot coffee to the face dispatches another lady, and Perez takes it worse than anyone, with like a dozen abdominal stabbings.

1:11:30 - Current body count: 11.

1:12:00 - More rapid fire flashbacks remind us that Hoffman is a horrible person who has committed multiple murders. And now he's pouring gasoline all over the station, burning all the bodies. WOW!

1:13:30 - Okay, Jill arrives at a pair of screens, one showing William's family and the other showing Pamela. Is she the one who's going to make this call? There are sixteen minutes left, by the way, including closing credits.

1:14:20 - William's son is about to flip a giant switch from a position labeled "Live" to a position labeled "Die." This seems ill-advised, at best.

1:14:40 - Looks like Hoffman is arriving on the scene as well, placing all of our remaining living characters in the death zoo. LET THE BODIES HIT THE FLOOR.

1:15:30 - Switch pulled... nothing happens. The vats of acid loom ominously above both cells.

1:16:00 - Hoffman arrives, finding a note left behind by Jill. Oh, shit, Jill. Did you just put Hoffman in a game of his own? Cue the ominous Saw music, and here come some more flashbacks!

1:16:40 - Here's that brutal miscarriage shot, one more time.

1:17:30 - Jill bursts back into the room and zaps Hoffman with a taser. I'm sure we'll learn why!

1:18:20 - William makes it through the final door with one second to spare! And now he's in his own cage. And up goes the partition. And on one side of him is his wife and kid, and on the other is the woman I'm sure he's been sleeping with.

1:18:40 - RECORD SCRATCH! The rug's been pulled right out from under me, folks. That's not William's mistress - it's his sister! It was HER birthday he was missing. He doesn't even have a wife! Which means that the mother and son next to him in the other cell are - no! YES! They're the wife and son of the sick man William condemned way back at the beginning of the movie! The one who yelled "I HAVE A FAMILY!" Oh and they recognize him alright. And they are PISSED.

1:19:10 - And here's Jigsaw! And he's telling the mother and son that they get to choose whether William lives or dies. That explains the switch! And OH GOD, THE ACID!

1:20:30 - Meanwhile, Jill affixes the lockjaw death trap to Hoffman - the one Amanda escaped from, in the first movie. Jigsaw WANTED this! This was what was in the box! (Another Seven reference...)

1:21:00 - Mom WANTS to pull the switch and kill William...

1:21:40 - But Mom can't...

1:22:00 - But GUESS WHO CAN! "You killed my dad you motherfucker!"

1:23:10 - Okay, I thought William was going to be doused in the acid. Not so. Instead, a series of giant metal syringes fall from the ceiling, sticking William in the back, and proceed to PUMP HIM FULL of HYDROCHLORIC FUCKING ACID.

1:23:20 - William is now literally a soft pile of guts and clothing. Like, his head is gone. How?

1:23:50 - Meanwhile, Hoffman! He's got 45 seconds to break free from the venus fly trap thing. Is he gonna do it? He just might do it! He...

1:24:30 - FAILS!

1:25:00 - End credits.

Welp, that sure was something, guys. Some final takeaways:

• Literally everyone who works in the health insurance sector is fair game for torture-murder.
• In order to be a serial killer's apprentice, you have to survive an attempt on your life by the serial killer, NO EXCEPTIONS.
• DVD is a piece of shit Stone Age technology and everything is free somewhere on the Internet.

Good night everyone!