Saw: The Final Chapter

Finally. Let's end this. No need for a live blog - especially since, believe it or not, my PS3 froze and wouldn't restart as soon as I put this DVD inside it... holy shit.

At any rate, here's the seventh and final installment of the Saw franchise - called Saw 3D in theaters because it came out when that fad was a thing.

There's not much left to say at this point. I think this was the goriest Saw yet, and it probably had the highest body count, but the series abandoned any thematic consistency a long time ago. Back when these movies were about testing guilty people's wills to live, there were some elements of karma and justice that at least made things interesting. This movie, by contrast, has a man lose his wife, employees, and best friend for a lie that he told, while meanwhile an entire police department gets slashed up by a serial killer hellbent on murdering Jigsaw's widow. It's all just torture and death - which, granted, is fine. That's always been what Saw movies are known for, and it's at least somewhat impressive that here in the seventh movie the writers were still finding new Rube Goldberg death traps to fuck people up.

I'm not sure what people want from these movies; this is the lowest rated one in the franchise on Rotten Tomatoes with a 9% freshness rating, but I thought it was just fine. Meanwhile the second-highest one on the same site is Saw VI, which I thought was just ridiculous and absurd and terrible. Were critics that tickled by seeing health insurance interns get slaughtered back in 2009?

I'll admit that this was easily the most over-the-top and unbelievable movie in the series for a few reasons, which is really saying something. The opening trap features a love triangle with two angry bros and a two-timing whore. One must die - will the two bros struggle to kill one another or will they decide that their mutual girlfriend deserves to take this one on the chin? Thing is, where every other Saw trap in the entire franchise takes place in a dark room or an underground bunker, this one takes place in the middle of a crowded plaza, full of onlookers filming the ordeal with their phones after some half-assed attempts to shut the trap down or call the police. That's insane, even by Saw standards!

There were also some glaring bodily harm continuity errors. These are gory, gross movies, but this one featured a guy yanking teeth out of his own head and another guy ripping half of his face apart to escape a trap. In their respective ensuing scenes, both of these men are fine. The guy who was just spewing blood out of his mouth is entirely clean and seems to have all his teeth and the guy whose face was ripped open doesn't even have a visible scar from it, let alone a bloody residue.

Eh, whatever. I've already spent more time on this post than it merits. These movies were fun, but I'm glad they've gone away.